


anthem for doomed youth

by kitseybarbours



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, Angst, F/M, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Slow Burn, Suicide, Violence, World War I, unbridled sentimentality about the First World War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-01-30 08:17:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 166,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12649695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitseybarbours/pseuds/kitseybarbours
Summary: May, 1914: Ben Organa-Solo has just moved to England with his mother after the accident that killed his father. Living with his Uncle Luke and his family, Ben soon meets and finds himself intrigued by his new neighbour, the son of the Earl Huxley, just as his cousins Rey and Finn both begin to fall for the dashing pilot Poe Dameron. Their idyllic summer comes to an end as Europe plunges headlong into war.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Гимн обреченной молодежи](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15379566) by [Galan_Rumos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galan_Rumos/pseuds/Galan_Rumos)



> This fic has been in the works since I first studied the English war poets, in February 2016; at least one of them, Wilfred Owen, evidently made rather an impression on me. After a prolonged hiatus, I would never have re-started work on this without the novel [The Dust That Falls from Dreams](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25722634-the-dust-that-falls-from-dreams) by Louis de Bernières and the piano piece [Comptine d'un autre été](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvryolGa19A) by Yann Tiersen (this fic's unofficial theme song), both of which came into my life in February 2017 and inspired me to pick this fic back up and work like mad on it for the next eight months. At long last, here it is!
> 
> Before we begin: thank you to [Gefionne](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Gefionne/works) for being my long-distance rock, in matters of writing and everything else; to [Redcap64](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Redcap64/pseuds/Redcap64) for reading the earliest drafts and wanting more of this, even when I wasn't sure that I did; to [Silivrenelya](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Silivrenelya/pseuds/Silivrenelya) for her eternal cheer and unflagging support; and to [MapleLantern](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MapleLantern/pseuds/MapleLantern) for sharing my deep and abiding passion for this period of English history. It's a long way to Tipperary and I wouldn't have made it there without all of you. ❤️

* * *

 

“Master Benjamin, _do_ please get out of bed,” frets his uncle’s valet. “Your mother is expecting you downstairs — your uncle will be arriving any minute…”

Cecil hovers anxiously at Benjamin Organa-Solo’s bedside, staring at the motionless lump of blankets and eiderdown presumably containing his employer’s nephew and trying to gauge whether he will cooperate. The last months have been a horribly trying time for the whole Organa-Solo family — now composed only of Ben and his mother, recently arrived in Northamptonshire from New York — but for no one more than the boy himself.

With great hesitation Cecil asks, “Master Benjamin?” again.

Under the covers, curled tightly into himself, Ben shifts slightly and emits a groan. “I can’t.”

“Sir, _please,”_ the nervous valet coaxes. “Your uncle is finally home from London, and you must come down to greet him.”

Ben burrows deeper still under his blankets. “We’re staying with him all summer. I’ll see him another day.”

 _“Please,_ sir — for your mother’s sake!”

Upon the invocation of his mother —  _God knows she’s suffered enough because of me —_ Ben gives a final groan and rolls over, shielding his face with one hand, and slowly and with much effort drags himself out of bed and to standing. With a blank look at Cecil, he meanders over to the bathroom and begins to draw a bath; Cecil breathes a sigh of relief.

“Your mother has requested that you wear the new grey suit for the dinner at the earl’s tonight, Master Benjamin,” Cecil calls over the noise of running water, going to the wardrobe and laying out Ben’s clothes for the day as well as the new suit. “Will that do?”

“If my mother says I’m to wear it, I suppose I’ll be wearing it,” Ben calls back, stepping into the steaming claw-foot tub. “What time is it?”

“Nearly eleven, sir — you’ve missed breakfast,” Cecil tells him. “The cook has saved you some porridge.”

“Tempting,” Ben replies lethargically, soaping his long, dark hair and ducking his head back to rinse it. He closes his eyes and sinks into the hot water, dreading the day ahead, as he has every day since that nightmarish afternoon three months ago.

 _“Please,_ sir, do hurry,” Cecil begs him. For once, Ben listens. In a remarkably short time he is bathed, dried, and dressed in a light summer suit, reluctantly adjusting his necktie as Cecil darts around behind him, brushing imaginary lint off the linen.

“All right, Cecil, I think that’s enough,” Ben dismisses him. He gives himself a last once-over in the mirror with considerable apprehension.

He doesn’t remember the last time he wore a plain daytime suit — not his pyjamas, which he’s been wearing every day since they arrived in England last week; or mourning black, which had been the family’s uniform in New York for the previous three months — and he almost doesn’t recognise himself, his face scrubbed and his hair clean. But the tell-tale dark circles still linger under his eyes; and the scar…

Ben reaches up to touch the grotesque, still-red slash that twists evilly from his right temple to his left cheekbone. He knows he’s lucky to have kept his eye, and that the doctors were able to fix the wound as well as they did; but the scar still shames and taunts him every day. Ben sighs.

After the accident, and the further incident that followed it, Ben’s mother Leia decided that the best thing for the family would be to move back to England, where she was born. Her twin brother Luke, who lives in London, has reopened his old summer residence of Millennium House and is coming to stay with them for the season, and has even pulled some strings to secure Ben a place at Oxford in the autumn.

Leia continually reminds Ben that he should be grateful, but Ben feels like a charity case, or worse, a pariah, exiled here for his crimes. For he knows that regardless of what his mother says — that they’ve come to England to be closer to her family, or so that Ben can get a better education — they left New York because of him.

The passage to England was cold and rainy and miserable, six days of storms and squalls and Ben huddled seasick and grey-faced below-decks, haunted day and night by horridly vivid recollections. He’d clutched his beloved sketchbook to his chest but had been too sick even to draw; he couldn’t sleep, and when he did he woke crying out in terror, his mother trying in vain to soothe him as tears coursed down her own face. He barely remembers their arrival at the house, after a seemingly endless trip from London: glimpses of the scattered outbuildings, the grown-wild gardens, and finally the handsome red-brick manor house itself — which to Ben, at first glance and still now, had the appearance of nothing so much as an elegant prison.

And now, after a week of staying shut-up in his room, emerging not even for meals — leaving Luke’s butler-valet Cecil, sent ahead from London, to unpack, tiptoeing around Ben’s listless form on the bed — Leia has decided that today Ben must start trying to readjust to normal life. Even though they’ve barely settled in (wings of the manor are still being dusted and aired-out; the gardener is hard at work wrangling back years’ worth of overgrown bushes and vines), custom demands that Leia and her only son call on the local gentry and be properly introduced to society as soon as possible.

The local squire is the Earl Huxley, also known as Major Brendon Huxley Sr., a military man like Ben’s father. He has one son, five years older than Ben, and has been a widower since the boy was twelve, apparently showing no inclination to marry again. The earl keeps a fine but spartan estate at Huxley Hall, the family seat on the adjoining property to the Solos’; it is there that this evening’s reception will be held. The whole parish will be in attendance: Ben imagines it’ll be a stuffy formal affair even worse than those he’d regularly attended in New York. He sighs, thinking with dismay of an evening full of pasty, simpering English girls tittering behind their hands at him, laughing at his accent and his scar, whispering furiously and _knowing,_ surely knowing…

However, the evening does hold some promise. Aside from the Huxleys, father and son, and the other _society_ neighbours he’ll be expected to consort with this evening, Ben will also be seeing his mother’s brother Luke for the first time in years — and Luke’s adopted daughter, a girl about his own age whom Ben has never met. Luke and the girl — Aurelia, Ben remembers from Luke’s letters — will be staying with Ben and Leia all summer, and it’s them Ben will now go downstairs to meet.

Tucking an errant strand of dark hair behind his ear and giving his lapels a final tug, Ben sighs and says, “All right, Cecil; I’m ready.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry, Luke; Benjamin will surely be down shortly. I thought it best to let him sleep, he’s still not been well – Ah! There he is.”

Leia Organa-Solo interrupts herself quickly when she sees Ben appear in the foyer. She stands and goes to greet her only son as he makes his sheepish entrance to the parlour (after having stopped briefly in the kitchen to eat, reluctantly, his cold porridge). “Come here, my dear, and say hello to your uncle,” Leia beseeches him, and Ben can see the relief in her eyes at seeing him, finally, awake and dressed.

“Hello, Mama. I’m sorry I’m late,” Ben mumbles. He lets himself be kissed on both cheeks by his mother (she has to stand on tip-toes), and then turns to the sofa — where he is surprised to see not just his Uncle Luke and the girl who must be his cousin, but a third stranger: a dark-skinned man sitting at the girl’s side. He looks to be about Ben’s age, perhaps a little older; he’s tall and broad, well-muscled, but he’s dressed in clothing just as fine as Luke and Aurelia’s, and seated as their equal; _so not a servant, then._

“Hello, Uncle Luke,” Ben says to the middle-aged man on the left end of the couch. Luke is Leia’s twin brother, but he looks much younger than their forty-something years: though his blond hair and beard are fading and streaked with grey in places, and though his dress and posture are dignified, his blue eyes sparkle with a mischievous look that Ben remembers vividly from his childhood. Luke smiles warmly at his nephew.

“Hello, my dear boy!” Luke greets him. He stands and presses Ben’s hand with his remaining one, the left: the right is a leather prosthetic, replacing the hand lost in the Boer. “You’ve grown so, Ben,” Luke enthuses in that boyish way of his. Ben smiles awkwardly in return. “What a dashing young man you’ve become!”

Ben ducks his head, uncomfortable already. “Thank you, Uncle Luke.” He knows he’s never been handsome, by any stretch of the imagination, and that the scar has only made it worse; he almost wishes his uncle wouldn’t flatter, would simply tell things as they are. All at once he regrets this whole affair. _I wish I’d never come down. I wish I didn’t have to do this —_

“Ah! And you haven’t met my lovely daughter,” Luke announces. “May I present your cousin Aurelia.” He gestures to the girl on the sofa with pride.

The girl grins widely up at Ben, with no hint of trepidation or disgust, to the likes of which he’s become accustomed. “Call me Rey, please,” she requests jovially. “All my friends do, and I _do_ think you and I will be friends!” She stands, too, and presses Ben’s hand between both of hers.

Unlike the drab, prim girls Ben had feared meeting tonight, Rey is decidedly lovely. Her light-brown hair is piled loosely in a pompadour — a formality in contrast to her wide hazel eyes, pert sun-freckled nose, and sweet smiling mouth. Like Luke, she seems to glow with vivacity, energy, and _life;_ Ben can practically see her skipping out of the parlour to go climb the old oak at the foot of the drive.

He smiles hesitantly back at her despite himself, reassured by the honesty in her face and tone. “I'm Ben. It’s, ah — good to meet you.”

“And may I present another member of my little family _,”_ Luke says. “This is my ward, Finn — one of the academy’s star pupils. He’s a brilliant young man with a heart of gold,” Luke explains, smiling proudly at the dark-skinned man, “and I’m so pleased you’re finally to meet him.”

The academy of which Luke speaks is his life’s work: the orphanage he founded and manages in central London (currently in the hands of his business partner, Reg Antilles, while Luke is here with them.) Luke and Leia themselves were orphaned at a young age; their mother was English nobility, their father a soldier, and both died shortly after the twins’ birth. Leia was sent to be raised by a senator cousin in America, and Luke went to live on their father’s stepbrother’s farm in Devonshire. Despite keeping up regular correspondence all their lives, the siblings never met again until they were in their twenties; and though they became close friends almost at once (Luke spent a year living in New York with them when Ben was young; Leia made biannual visits to the orphanage in London), they have continued to live across the world from each other — until now.

Ben shakes Finn’s hand. “A pleasure to meet you, cousin,” he says.

Finn smiles broadly, his teeth showing brilliant white against his dark skin: “Likewise.” His hands are large and rough and warm, workman’s hands. His accent bears a cheerful hint of Cockney, less refined than Rey’s, who’s been living with Luke for longer; but though his smile is hearty, there is a hint of wariness that lingers in his eyes, as if he’s ready to bolt at the first sign of danger. Ben wonders briefly what his life was like, before Luke took him under his wing —  _what it was that put that darkness in his eyes —_ and wonders too, with a chill, if his own gaze now bears such traces.

“It’s such a beautiful day, it seems a shame to be inside,” Rey observes merrily. She looks to her adopted father first, and when he nods, turns to Leia and asks, her tone warm and familiar already: “Might Ben and Finn and I take a tour of the grounds, Aunt Leia?”

Leia smiles kindly, her brown eyes crinkling. “Of course. Ben can show you the stables, and the gardens.” She turns her gaze on her son. “Go on, then, dear; show your cousins around.”

Finn shifts in his seat and shoots Rey a hesitant look. She catches his eye, smiles, and gives a little nod, as if to say _of course._ Ben watches them, intrigued by the deep connection they seem to share. Affection is plainly present in both of their gazes — but not of a brotherly-sisterly kind. Something falls into place for Ben. He wonders if Finn and Rey are betrothed already, or if such plans have yet to materialise — because, judging by the way they look at one another, such plans certainly will.

“Actually, if you don’t mind, ma’am — I’d rather stay here,” Finn apologises to Leia. His eyes flicker ardently to the bookshelves on the opposite wall.

Leia follows his hungry gaze, and understanding dawns: she smiles indulgently and says, “By all means, Finn; help yourself.” She nods to the books, and Finn beams and leaps up to go peruse them.

With a last fond look at Finn, Rey rises, carelessly smoothing her pale-yellow dress and tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She holds out a hand to Ben: “Come on, then!”

Ben hesitates — he doesn’t want to do this. But Leia glances at him from behind Rey, giving him a frown, and so reluctantly Ben rises and takes Rey’s proffered hand. His cousin smiles widely and leads him out of the parlour: “The grounds are so lovely, I can’t wait to explore!” she enthuses.

Ben casts a last look over his shoulder, and Leia gives him a tiny smile, looking relieved: _Thank you._

 

* * *

 

“I do _love_ the sunshine in the country!” Rey exclaims as they stroll down the tree-lined drive — or, rather, as Ben slouches uncomfortably along with his hands in his pockets, and Rey races joyously ahead, clamping a hand to her straw hat as she goes. Its yellow ribbons stream out behind her like rays of sunshine themselves.

“Tired of city life, are you?” Ben calls to her from a few feet behind.

“Oh, _yes,”_ she answers seriously over her shoulder. “There’s no green _anywhere_ there _,_ you know. I was born in the country,” she continues without prompting, talking a mile a minute; “but then my parents died when I was very young, and I was brought to live in London.” She gives a sigh, as if the very thought of London — grey, dirty, stinking, busy _London_  — pains her. “I’d nearly forgotten there was this much green on the whole planet!”

Rey gives a little twirl, arms held wide out around her, as if to bottle up the summer and keep it in her chest. Her laugh burbles out of her like a little girl’s. She pauses in her gambolling to allow Ben to catch up and fall into stride at her side.

“There certainly isn’t this kind of green in New York City,” Ben agrees.

“Did you grow up there?” Rey asks. Ben nods. “I’ve never been, but I imagine it’s much like London. You know what I mean, then. Do you miss it?”

Ben hesitates. He thinks for a painful moment of the glamorous parties, the high-ceilinged apartments, and the crowded streets of his hometown — the daily bustle and buzz that he took so much for granted as to forget that anything else really existed, and that now is so tainted with darkness and blood. He wonders, for a moment, if he’ll ever go back —  _if I_ can _ever_ _go back._

“I’ve been away less than two weeks,” he says coolly, trying to dodge the question. Clearly Rey has little knowledge of the real reason why they’ve moved, which should be refreshing, but is instead now putting him in an even more awkward situation. _How much do I let on?_

“Well, I know, but do you miss it?” Rey presses.

“No,” Ben lies, thinking achingly of home — a home which is now lost to him, perhaps irrevocably — and sighs. “No. I don’t.”

Rey seems to sense that they have entered thorny territory, for — to Ben’s immense relief — she quickly changes the subject. “Doesn’t the country just feel full of _possibility?_ It’s all so new, so unspoiled!” Rey exclaims, beaming. She runs ahead again, arms spread wide, and spins back around to face him. “Just think, Ben! We’ve got all summer ahead of us. The summer of nineteen-fourteen! _Anything_ could happen.”

Ben stops in his tracks. He looks long and hard at his cousin, lets her words sink in; and remarkably, for the first time in months, he feels a glimmer of something that might be hope. An end, perhaps, to this awful gloom of memory; a chance to absolve himself and to move on…

Ben smiles.

“Anything at all.”

 

* * *

 

That evening, Brendon Huxley II stands wrapped in an embroidered silk dressing-gown, leaning over the washbasin to look in the mirror as he manoeuvres his straight-razor over the last fine hairs on his face. He sets the razor down, pats on aftershave, and then combs and parts his damp red hair, smoothing pomade through it so not a strand is out of place. He steps back to examine his face and hair from every angle, tilting his head this way and that until he decides he’s satisfied.

Hux, as the young lieutenant prefers to be called, goes next to his dressing-room, where his dress uniform (freshly pressed and brushed by Hux himself) hangs on the door of the wardrobe. He unties the dressing-gown and hangs it neatly before pulling on the uniform with care — gold buttons up to his chin, cuffs folded with precision. As he inspects his reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall, twisting and turning with difficulty to see the back of his jacket, he wishes, as he so often does, that his father hadn’t dismissed their personal servants after Hux’s mother died: _if I still had a valet, this wouldn’t be such an ordeal._

Sighing, Hux faces forward again and straightens the collar of his jacket in the mirror. He smooths a last hair back into place before pulling on his leather gloves. He can hear the noise and bustle of the burgeoning party downstairs: the front doors opening and closing again, exclamations from the ladies, his father’s deep voice making awkward greetings. The Huxleys don’t entertain often anymore — many of tonight’s guests haven’t been inside Huxley Hall for years, if ever, despite the fact that Brendon Huxley the elder is the local lord and is thus expected to bear the brunt of social engagements in the parish. He stopped entertaining almost entirely after the death of his wife eleven years ago, and the local society has never quite forgiven him for it.

Tonight’s affair, though, was inescapable, even in face of the elder Huxley’s unofficial closed-door policy. The arrival of a new family in town has always necessitated a formal reception at the local squire’s residence, and Luke Skywalker’s return, along with the arrival of Leia Organa and her son, is no exception — even if the sudden re-opening of Millennium House in preparation for the Americans’ moving-in had been the talk of the town for the whole month before their arrival. It was whispered that their sudden egress from New York seemed more like a _flight,_ an _escape_ , a _running-away,_ than anything driven by the simple desire to reconnect with family; and that of course begged the question, _running away from_ _what?_

No-one knows quite what to expect, the younger Huxley included.

With a final look in the mirror — light green eyes staring blankly back at him; _I don’t want to do this_  — Hux turns and goes downstairs to meet the long-awaited guests.

 

* * *

 

Huxley Hall is an imposing old house. Ben imagines, as they pull up the winding gravel drive in the carriage — the sun is beginning to set, casting the manor in dramatic shadows — that it was once in impeccable condition, and no doubt stunning in the daytime; but now its grey stone walls are weathered, even crumbling, and overgrown with ivy in places. It stands out, a formidable silhouette, against the sweeping parkland around it, leading off to a small, dark wood just visible in the distance, the sun sinking red behind the trees. Despite its obvious age and seeming lack of upkeep, though, the house is still grand in an upright and stiffly formal way, remaining steadfast even when confronted with the relentless march of time.

They rein up, and a footman appears from the growing shadows to open the carriage door and help the party out, beginning of course with the ladies. Rey accepts his hand, jumps neatly from the second step, and smooths down her dress, exclaiming at the pool of warm light spilling from the opened front doors and the silhouetted party guests within: there is a hum of music and chatter floating invitingly from inside. “How lovely,” Rey murmurs, and gives a bashful Finn her arm, leading him inside at once.

“Come along, Ben.” Leia nudges him gently from where he stands, craning his neck to take in the façade of the house. “Are you ready?” she asks him.

The footman, having helped Luke down and received hearty thanks from him, now hops into the driver’s seat and gives an efficient crack of the whip, heading toward unseen stables. Luke waits, hovering politely aside from their conversation, to escort his sister inside.

Ben looks down at his mother. Impressive as the house might be from the outside, Ben has little desire to see what it looks like — or who might be present —  _inside._ But for his mother’s sake, he steels himself, and forces a small smile: “Yes.”

Leia smiles back, gratefully. Her brother steps forward and takes her arm, and Ben follows them up to the doors, where Rey and Finn have paused to wait for them. Rey catches Ben’s eye and gives him a radiant smile. “Won’t this be fun?” she whispers, squeezing Finn’s arm, and Ben can’t help but smile back.

_Maybe it will after all._

The doors are opened for them. The evening has begun.

They’ve hardly been at Huxley Hall ten minutes before Rey has charmed everyone in the manor. From the silent, tight-lipped butler who let them inside, to the uniformed waiters now serving them drinks, her bubbling cheer and wide-eyed exclamations of praise — for the fine carved lintel over the door, the sweeping spiral staircase, the ancient crystal chandelier — have elicited a smile from everyone they’ve met. In the ballroom, now, she is mingling easily with the crowd, with Finn close at her side. A quartet in the corner plays a lively, upbeat tune, and a few couples are dancing; Ben suspects Rey and Finn will soon join them.

Ben himself stands alone at the side of the room, watching the crowd and seeing his mother and uncle make their separate ways through it, stopping to shake hands and introduce themselves — or, in Luke’s case, greet old acquaintances with warm embraces: though he hasn’t lived continuously at Millennium House for some years, he knows all the old parish families, and is most fondly remembered in the village.

Finn and Rey have wound up in the middle of the non-dancing crowd, already deep in conversation with a dashing young man in RFC dress uniform; he has dark curling hair and intelligent eyes and has both Rey and Finn completely enraptured. As Ben watches, his cousin and Finn both laugh out loud at something the young pilot says. Ben feels a strange, sad stab of something like jealousy: he can’t recall the last time he laughed like that at anything, with anyone, and wonders detachedly if he ever will again.

Turning his eyes from the three of them, Ben observes the other guests. He sees the earl (steel-faced, cold-eyed) making his way stiffly through the crowd, looking out-of-place even in his own home. Ben recalls what little gossip he’s heard — that ever since the earl’s wife fell ill and died eleven years ago, Major Huxley has been something of a recluse, drowning his grief in drink; that the servants here tonight were hired specifically for the evening, as all the household staff were dismissed at once after her death. Watching his father, Ben wonders what the younger Huxley will be like, and feels already a pang of bitter empathy: _what a terrible way for a childhood to end…_

Moving on from contemplating the earl, Ben sees couples form and join the dancing, watches as more and more people file into the high-ceilinged, austerely decorated ballroom and add their laughter and chatter to the crowd. He finds he can manage this, being part of the party and yet not; he is alone in a room full of people, and it soothes him.

“Hello, Lady Sara.” One voice, near Ben, reaches him over the din of the crowd. He follows it to its source — close by, a young red-haired man in army uniform, his face stately-pale and perfectly composed, kisses the gloved hand of an exotic-looking dame whose lustrous black hair is piled high above her head. “A pleasure to see you, as always — and are your husband and son also here tonight?” the red-haired man continues, in the same tone of efficient civility. Ben recalls having heard something about military careers and red hair both running in the earl's family: _t_ _his must be Lord Huxley's son._

“Oh, yes,” the woman replies in a mellifluous, slightly Spanish-accented voice. “Poe is over there, speaking with the Skywalker girl, and I believe Kenneth went looking for your father — wanted to make sure he said hello, you know; it’s been so long since we’ve been here…”

The rest of the woman’s reply is lost as the band strikes up a particularly zippy next number. Unable to hear the younger Huxley’s response, Ben still watches him as the conversation carries on. The young man clearly lacks no social graces — the kiss on the hand was proof enough of that — but he seems to be going through the motions perfunctorily, with artistry but no passion. He looks — bored, frankly; his light eyes dart about, as if looking for a clock, or perhaps a way out. (Ben sympathises at once.) But the Lady Sara carries on talking, her black-gloved hands making dramatic, expressive gestures as she tells a story; and Huxley remains just attentive enough to be polite.

Ben looks away for a moment, growing bored. He sees Finn still talking enthusiastically with the curly-haired pilot (now obviously Lady Sara’s son; his name, Ben thinks, was _Poe?),_ while Rey has moved on and is now chatting earnestly with a footman, seemingly oblivious to the smitten look in his eyes.

When he looks back to the Lady Sara and the earl’s son, Ben finds the latter gone. Almost instantly, without realising it, he finds himself looking for him in the crowd; and then, seconds later, there is a firm hand at his elbow, and the same cool civil voice says, “Excuse me, but I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

Ben turns, and there is the younger Huxley, appearing as if by magic at his side. He’s of a height with Ben, in his smart army boots; but even without them, Ben imagines he’d only be an inch or so shorter. Up close Ben sees now that his eyes are a pale shade of green, set widely on either side of a long, delicately pointed nose. His shock of red hair is combed and pomaded with frightening precision, and his sharp chin is impeccably clean-shaven. When Ben shakes his proffered hand he is surprised not to feel marble through the leather gloves.

“Brendon Huxley the Second,” the earl’s son says smoothly. With the barest upward tilt of his chin, his eyes come to rest on Ben’s face with intense scrutiny.

Ben stares defiantly back. “Benjamin Organa-Solo,” he answers. “A pleasure.”

“Are you enjoying the evening, Mr Organa-Solo?” Huxley asks indifferently.

“Immensely,” Ben replies.

They lock eyes, staring each other down once again. Ben imagines with a wince what Huxley is seeing, cataloguing. He pictures his own visage: his nose, Roman to the extreme, jutting from the sharp awkward lines of his face; his dark hair not quite long enough to fully hide the enormity of his ears; and of course the scar, cutting a jagged trench across the already irregular landscape of his features. He can practically feel Huxley’s gaze alighting on each of the beauty-spots dropped at random on his skin — marring it further, making him yet uglier, he knows. Uncomfortable, Ben wants to look away, but doesn’t.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a new family in town,” Huxley says in that same tone of bland propriety, apparently finished with his inspection — _and was I up to snuff?_ Ben wonders drily. “Your arrival has caused quite a stir,” Huxley adds. He gives a cursory smile as he says it; it doesn’t reach his eyes.

The back of Ben’s neck prickles. _So he must know._ He doesn’t have time to react to Huxley’s comment, though, because the earl’s son now asks, “I imagine you’ll be going up to school in the autumn?” without much real interest.

After a slight pause Ben nods. “Oxford,” he replies. “Reading English.”

Huxley’s eyebrows arch. His tone is slightly condescending when he answers, with false animation, _“English!_ How exciting.”

“Mm,” Ben responds, feeling offended despite himself. “And you? What are you reading?” he asks innocently.

“Nothing,” Huxley responds chilly, his brows twitching. “I am a lieutenant in His Majesty’s Armed Forces,” _if you hadn’t already noticed,_ his disapproving tone seems to say. He straightens his back almost imperceptibly; Ben’s eye is drawn, as intended, to the stripes of rank on his uniform.

“Impressive,” Ben replies in an equally frosty tone. They lock eyes again.

Ben tries to read Huxley’s gaze, to see if he’d meant anything by his throwaway comment about their arrival here — or if, by some miracle, he’d truly intended nothing by his words. But a flush of shame creeps up Ben’s cheeks. _Stupid. He knows, and they all know — everyone here, they know. I deserve his derision, I deserve their hatred — I’m not like them. I don’t belong here._ Ben bites his lip, hard.

“I’m afraid I must be off,” Huxley says finally, breaking eye contact. “Enjoy your evening, Mr Solo. I’m sure we’ll meet again,” he adds carelessly.

“Good evening, Mr Huxley.”

In hardly a second the earl's son is gone from Ben's side, cutting a seamless path through the crowd. As he goes, Ben becomes aware of how their exchange had affected him. He finds himself indignant, frustrated, _ashamed,_ even, in the wake of the other man’s haughty looks and superior words. But, Ben realises, he is _feeling —_ feeling something more than the monotony of grief and guilt — for the first time in weeks, if not months.

This alone keeps his eyes fixed on Hux until he has disappeared into the crush.

 

* * *

 

The evening passes somewhat more pleasantly than Ben had expected. He joins in the dancing eventually, at Rey’s insistence, and spins her and then two other girls around the floor; but then despite Rey’s disappointed protests he excuses himself, downing a glass of punch snatched from a passing waiter’s tray and allowing himself to fade into the background again.

He’s exhausted: the stress of today, the socialisation — plus the strangeness of his conversation with Huxley, and the ever-present recollections of evenings like this that had happened _before — the garden-party at the van Ormans’, two weeks before; the Macaulays’ ball, three days before —_ have drained him utterly. His mood is sour and his energy low.

But vastly more important than his own, though, is _Rey’s_ enjoyment of the evening, being that she’s a girl of marriageable age, not to mention Luke Skywalker’s adopted daughter. And so far, it seems, Rey is having a wonderful time.

She dances with Finn, pressed as close as the dance will allow: murmuring silly things into his ear, dropping a kiss on his cheek, making him fairly glow with joy. She sees Poe Dameron watching them from the side-lines, and shoots a smile at him over Finn’s shoulder — she beckons him over and dances the next set with him, kissing Finn’s cheek again before she goes.

They dance easily and well together, and make a striking pair: Poe’s strong hands on Rey’s slim waist and his dark liquid eyes on her own. He leans down to say something into her ear and Rey’s laugh is like rainfall. Finn watches the two of them, his eyes alight, and somehow they end up all three of them dancing, Rey taking each of their hands and twirling herself around. No-one can take their eyes off of the three of them.

When the song ends, Rey, flushed and laughing, gives a curtsey, and her two partners take deep bows. The room claps and laughs for them, and then a new song is struck up and the three of them stumble happily off the floor.

“Having fun?” Luke asks, beaming, as his daughter trips over to him, her face aglow and her two gentlemen behind her.

“ _Yes!”_ Rey fairly coos. She holds out a hand to Poe and beckons him closer. “Papa, this is Poe,” she introduces him proudly.

Luke presses Poe’s hand affectionately, taking in his handsome dark features and open, amiable smile. “Lord and Lady Dameron’s son, if I’m not mistaken?” he guesses. “All grown up!”

Poe nods with enthusiasm. “Yes, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet you again — my parents have always spoken very highly of you,” Poe says warmly, his dark eyes sparkling and kind.

His accent is a charming mélange of Spanish and American, although he has lived in England for almost twenty years. Rey learned tonight that his mother, although raised in England, is of Guatemalan descent, and that after she married Poe’s father, an American, the family lived in Florida for the first ten years of Poe’s life before returning to Britain to be closer to Lady Sara’s ailing parents. Spanish was Poe’s first language, like his mother's, and one can still hear it in his speech; Rey wonders if he might be persuaded to teach her a few words, sometime.

“And I of them, my dear boy!” Luke returns. “Wonderful people, the two of them — but what about _you,_ young man?” Luke gestures to his pilot’s uniform. “You’ve joined the RFC?”

“Yes, sir — and didn’t you used to fly, too?” Poe asks; and Luke, smiling delightedly, responds, “Most certainly!” and launches into a favourite story about his old plane, regrettably sold after the loss of his hand.

Rey and Finn exchange a look, smiling, and quietly step away: Luke, once he’s started talking about flying — and with a fellow pilot, no less — is not likely to stop in any kind of hurry. They leave him there and melt back into the crowd to dance another set together; and soon enough Poe re-joins them, as if drawn by a magnetic pull to their sides.

At some point in the night, Ben finds himself alone in a quieter corner of the ballroom. His last conversation partner, an elderly countess who seemed to think his name was _Ren,_ has tottered off into the crowd, leaving him gratefully to his own devices once again.

Lost in his thoughts, Ben almost doesn’t notice the earl’s son coming to stand near him. Huxley makes no acknowledgment of him, but Ben catches sight of him in his peripheral vision and notes that he, too, is alone, his eyes travelling over the crowd like a general’s as he inspects his troops. Ben thinks he hears him sigh.

“Hello again,” Ben says, because the silence has gone on too long and they are each acutely aware of the other’s presence.

Huxley turns his green eyes on Ben in mock surprise. “Hello,” he answers dispassionately.

Ben steps awkwardly closer to him: _no going back now._ “The party has been very entertaining,” Ben offers.

Huxley’s nostrils narrow just slightly in derision. Ben feels his face flush. “Thank you,” Huxley responds haughtily. “I’d say it has been a success.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Silence descends once more. In the pause, Hux flicks his eyes up and down the American boy’s figure: linen suit cut in an unfamiliar style —  _must be the fashion in America_ ; _un_ fashionably long, dark wavy hair, through which the tips of large ears protrude. Benjamin Organa-Solo’s lips are plush and well-formed: the only regular feature in a strikingly unusual face, composed of a protruding nose, sharp cheekbones, enormous deep-brown eyes, and a scattering of small moles across the nearly-olive skin. Perhaps the _most_ striking of all these striking things, though, is the new-looking scar that carves its way diagonally across his face: vicious and raw and impossible to ignore.

Despite this, though: _Unusual, but not entirely unpleasant,_ Hux thinks involuntarily. Suddenly embarrassed, he clears his throat and breaks the silence.

“Your cousin seems to be fitting in quite well,” Hux invents. “Aurelia, isn’t it?” he asks, though he knows that yes, it is — a fanciful, Roman-sounding name, uncommon in this world of endless Elizabeths and Marys.

“Rey,” Ben corrects almost unconsciously. “She prefers to go by Rey.”

“I see.” Distracted, Hux inspects the seam of his left glove. “ _Rey_ certainly looks to be fitting in,” he repeats. “Poe Dameron seems quite taken with her.”

“Yes,” Ben agrees.

“The Damerons are a prominent family in the county,” Hux informs him automatically, feeling like a copy of Debrett’s _._ “Lady Sara is descended from South American nobility, and her husband Kenneth is the eldest son of an old American dynasty. Their son would be an advantageous match for your cousin — unless she is already betrothed?” he interrupts himself, remembering the dark-skinned man who has not left the girl’s side all night.

“No, Rey and Finn aren’t to be married,” Ben answers with equal detachment, “or at least not that I know of.” Ben looks around, just realising that he hasn’t seen Rey or Finn — or Poe, for that matter — in some time. “Where has she disappeared to?” he wonders aloud.

“To the library, I believe,” Hux answers. “She asked me if she and her companions might pay it a visit; an unusual request for a party, to be sure, but she looked so eager, I could hardly turn her down.” He clears his throat. “We have an impressive collection,” he adds without needing to. “My mother was a great lover of Russian literature and Shakespeare.”

Something changes in his eyes when he refers to the late Lady Huxley. Ben is startled to see a flicker of emotion cross his face, the barest downturn of his handsome mouth — and then it’s gone, and Huxley’s face is the same careful mask.

“I see,” Ben says. “We had quite a library at home ourselves, but we had to leave most of our books in America.” Real regret creeps into his tone.

“You’re welcome to ours,” Hux offers, without thinking. “You, and your cousins, too — we never have visitors here; the books are just collecting dust.” He winces minutely at this small outburst, and clears his throat again. “It would do us good to have someone like Rey in the house. Those books are meant to be read.”

“I’ll let her know,” Ben answers. Something flickers across his face — something that, if not for that curious closed-off look in his eyes, Hux would have thought to be a smile. It’s gone as soon as it’d come. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”

Hux nods twice in quick, sharp succession. “Good.” He fiddles with the cuff of his uniform, suddenly compelled to straighten out the non-existent wrinkles and lay it perfectly flat. “And as I said. You are welcome to it as well,” he says stiffly. “Whenever you’d like.”

Ben studies Huxley’s face. _Curious:_ while the earl seems content with, or at least accustomed to, their isolation — and while his son, at first, had seemed the same way — here is Huxley fairly insisting on their company, offering an invitation that seems more like a demand.

 _Can it be he’s lonely?_ Ben thinks, incredulous at first.

But then he thinks of a twelve-year-old boy suddenly motherless: all the servants, a beloved tutor, maybe, dismissed at once; and then being packed off to boarding-school and coming home at Christmas to an empty joyless manor, a father withdrawn into himself and cold as the stones in the walls. Military school more an escape than a passion – though that, it would seem, has grown over time; and the marble façade put up for protection rather than out of pride.

Ben wonders if Brendon Huxley’s son has ever had a friend in his life.

“Thank you, Huxley,” Ben responds finally. “We’ll be sure to pay a visit as soon as we can.” He smiles, more surely this time, and meets Huxley’s eyes for a fraction of a second before looking quickly away. He prepares to turn and go, but a sudden touch on his arm stops him. He looks back.

Huxley’s face is unreadable. “Please — call me Hux.”

Ben’s eyebrows rise. “Good evening, then, Hux.”

Hux nods, curtly, and then disappears again, leaving Ben alone to wonder.

 

* * *

 

The carriage-ride home is filled with Rey’s cheerful gushing about every aspect of the evening: “And the _music,_ oh, it was lovely, wasn’t it, Aunt Leia — Poe said he’d have been happy to dance to it all night, didn’t he, Finn?” She turns eagerly to Finn for his approval and gets a vigorous nod in return, both their eyes sparkling with the lingering joy of a night spent in Poe Dameron’s company — and each other’s.

The others — Leia, looking tired but composed in her favourite blue satin; Luke, beaming as he listens to his daughter recount the night’s events; and Ben, leaning his head against the window and counting the moments until he’s in bed — all listen, and variously wonder if young Master Dameron won’t come to call sometime soon.

“He seemed utterly taken with you, Rey,” Luke tells his daughter, “and you, too, Finn. I wouldn’t be surprised if he came to court you, my darling girl.”

Rey blushes brilliantly and demands, “Do you think so, _really?”_

Her father and aunt both laugh, but everyone in the party knows that Luke’s words are serious, in truth. From both a financial and a social standpoint, such a union makes perfect sense; and the fact that Rey and Poe got on so well only sweetens the prospect. Already a betrothal seems possible, even quite natural —  _and after betrothal, marriage; and then she’s gone, and I’m left,_ Finn thinks dismally as he draws slightly back from the conversation, watching Rey giggle and exclaim at her aunt’s and father’s teasing, but with a glimmer in her eye that suggests she knows that these little fantasies have a strong chance of becoming realities.

_And what of me?_

Finn knows he stands no chance next to Poe: a budding flying ace, in line for a viscountcy, heartbreakingly handsome… While it was natural for Finn and Rey to become close, even affectionate — both losing their families at a young age, both raised on the rough streets of London before being rescued by Luke and his academy; natural, even, for Finn to fall in love with her, and think that maybe she felt the same — it is now just as natural that she should put him aside when someone better comes along. _What can I offer her?_ Finn aspires above all else to be a novelist, but even with Luke’s money, this vocation would be at pains to support him and Rey both — and one day, too, Luke’s money will run out. _I have nothing; Poe has it all._

And yet — still Finn cannot hate him. The magnetism Poe exerted on Rey didn’t spare Finn from its pull: he, too, was drawn in by the older man’s kind, handsome face, the fall of his dark curls in his eyes and the elegant swoop of his hand as he swept them away; the intense, lively way he had of turning his gaze on Finn when he spoke, nodding enthusiastically and even lightly touching Finn’s arm when he agreed with a point Finn had made (heart beating, tripping over his tongue under the heat of that look, and yet Poe treated his words like they’d come from the mouth of some philosopher or scholar).

He, too, had been achingly reluctant to leave Poe’s side at the end of the night, following a dejected Rey out of the ballroom when beckoned by Leia. And now here in the carriage, listening to Rey’s hopes for the future, Finn cannot find it in himself to resent the man who will in all likelihood take the one girl he’s ever loved away from him; for he finds himself falling for him, too.

 

* * *

 

At home, Ben climbs the stairs like a man in a dream, dismisses Cecil with a grunt, and undresses himself, leaving his suit crumpled over a chair and climbing dazed between the sheets. He realises he hasn’t spent this much time in the company of more people than his mother and the staff for months, not since the funeral; and, then as now, he feels depleted, both mentally and physically. But this time, although perhaps he doesn’t register it, the weight of his grief has been at least a little lessened.

Out of habit Ben reaches for his sketchpad, on the bedside table. Since they’ve arrived in England he’s been struggling: picking up a pencil and staring at the blank page for what seems like hours; eventually sketching something abstract and nightmarish before shoving the pad away in disgust and closing it, vowing not to pick it up again — and then always finding himself pulled back, compelled to do _something,_ to get the horrors out of his head and make them tangible and real instead. He doesn’t know if it’s helpful or harmful; all he knows is that it gives him some form of control.

Tonight, though, when he picks up a pencil and opens to a fresh page, he stares at the blank space for only a few moments before he starts to draw. It’s blind and automatic, his hand moving beyond his control, without thoughts attached; he barely looks at what he’s drawing until he senses, somehow, that it’s finished.

Ben examines what he’s created, and finds with a small shock that he’s sketched the younger Huxley: in profile, staring out at an invisible crowd, his eyes alert and wary; the sharp lines of his cheekbones and nose, the perfect composure of his hair.

Ben stares down at the drawing. He can’t deny that it’s good — and this is a relief. The portrait looks more like his work had, _before._ It looks — not clean, exactly: the lines are rough and sketchy, the perspective not quite perfect — but _real,_ in sharp contrast to the hellish malformed creatures and desolate, ghoulish landscapes, scratched out in dark and darker lines, that are the only thing he’s been able to produce since the accident. Ben studies the sketch, and, despite the confusing admixture of emotions with which his conversation with Huxley had left him, now only feels relief.

He closes the pad and snuffs out his candle, shuts his eyes and wills himself to sleep, hoping that for once the nightmares will stay away and let him sleep in peace.

They don’t — he was foolish, he knows, to wish that they would. But interspersed with the horrors are flashes of red hair.

He has forgotten them by the morning.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it looks like a Secret History reference, it's a Secret History reference, trust me. Find me on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com)!


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

Hux rises early the next day, despite having gone to bed late, after the last party guests had finally trickled out the door — unwilling to leave Huxley Hall, not knowing when or if they’d ever pass through its doors again. After bidding the last of them an irritated adieu sometime near one in the morning (his father having disappeared, most likely accompanied by a bottle of something, some hours ago, his absence hardly noted by their guests), Hux had retired gratefully upstairs. Brushing his uniform and hanging it back in its wrappings with care, washing his face and cleaning his teeth and shrugging on striped silk pyjamas, Hux had at last climbed into bed and waited impatiently for sleep to come; but to his chagrin, it hadn’t.

He’d tossed and turned and grumbled and sighed, all to no avail; he’d considered and then decided against relighting his candle and reading a book, counting it as more trouble than it might be worth. He’d then thought about having a smoke, knowing that the tobacco might soothe him, but decided this wasn’t a dire enough occasion to necessitate indulging in that particular vice.

All other options exhausted, he’d then turned with some resignation to that one other, rather baser remedy: sliding a hand inside his pyjama bottoms, taking himself in hand and making quick work of it, a sigh escaping through gritted teeth as he finished.

Hux cleaned himself up with impatience, irritated at the relief and satiation he felt, and then — more irritating still — fell almost at once into a deep and peaceful sleep, the likes of which he hadn’t known in ages (perhaps since the last time he’d allowed himself to _indulge)._ And now he wakes with the early dawn, feeling refreshed and only barely guilty about last night’s intemperance. He bathes (scrubbing with extra vigour til his pale skin is reddened), dresses quickly in his riding clothes, and eats a brief solitary breakfast, setting out for the stables as the rising summer sun paints the sky with its light.

His sorrel mare Millicent greets him with a soft whicker as Hux unlatches the stable door and steps inside, a carrot in hand. “Morning,” Hux says quietly to the stable at large — his father’s riding horse, a powerful dapple-grey stallion, and the four coach-horses, all shifting in their stalls and pricking up their ears with little noises of impatience as Hux walks past them to Millicent’s stall. He opens the gate, taking her bridle in hand, and holds out his flat palm with the carrot atop it. She eats the treat eagerly, butting her nose into his hand with affection when she’s finished.

Hux saddles up swiftly, and in no time at all is out in the parkland, gently spurring Millicent down their favourite riding trail. “Lovely morning, isn’t it, Millie?” he murmurs as they speed up to a canter, reaching to stroke between her ears. “Look how the sun glints off the lake, there. It would seem we’re to have a proper summer at last.”

Hux relaxes as he guides Millicent lazily down the trail, enjoying the feel of the early-morning sun on his tweed-coated shoulders and the sight of the parkland springing greenly into summer life. Riding calms him, as it always has; he lets his mind wander aimlessly as they go, keeping an unhurried pace that matches the slow peaceful speed of his thoughts. Any last traces of shame from the night before are gone, replaced with a restful tranquillity — at least for a while.

At some point, though, the train of Hux’s thoughts arrives at the party last night.

He recalls with satisfaction the overall smoothness of the evening — the guests had all seemed excited and happy to be admitted within the mysterious walls of Huxley Hall; the hired help had all performed excellently; everything down to the fashionable string quartet playing the latest tunes had come together perfectly, just as Hux had hoped it would. For while the reception was his father’s official duty, most of the job of planning it (and, as it turned out, hosting it) had fallen to Hux himself.

His father, since his mother’s death eleven years ago, has lost almost all of the charisma and easy self-possession which, Hux remembers, he _did_ used to have. Now, even the thought of social engagements causes Brendon Huxley the elder to shrink into himself, become colder and sterner and even more disagreeable than usual. Most of their expected social responsibilities — Christmas balls, garden parties — have fallen by the wayside, and for the most part the parish lets it slide; but on an occasion such as last night’s, Hux had deemed it unseemly to back down from the task, and had thus orchestrated the evening himself.

He’s much pleased with the result. The main goal — introducing the rumour-steeped Organa-Solos to the parish, and, more importantly, vice versa — seems to have been accomplished, and very well indeed. As he’d mentioned to Benjamin Organa-Solo last night, Aurelia Skywalker had certainly made a favourable impression on the neighbours, Poe Dameron especially…

At the thought of the American boy, Hux stops.

He’s somehow forgotten about Ben until now, despite their two rather memorable encounters last night. Hux recalls his impulsive invitation to their library, and winces slightly at the memory, fully aware of how _common_ he’d sounded — as if he were extending the offer out of genuine desire for Ben’s and his cousins’ company, rather than as a tactful and seemingly unavoidable response to Ben’s (presumably equally courtesy-based) expression of interest. _What else was I to say?_

Hux sighs, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck, which is beginning to perspire slightly as the morning sun grows warmer. _I should be heading back soon._ He tugs the reins and gently coaxes Millicent to turn back the way they came. She obeys readily and trots off down the path. Hux hopes to regain the same easy emptiness of thoughts on the way back to the stables, but soon finds that he’s distracted: he can’t shake the thought of Ben.

He recalls the younger man’s uneasy, self-conscious mannerisms, the slouching way he held his lanky form as if hoping to blend into the walls unnoticed; and thinks again of that cheerlessness in his eyes, the dark shadows under them echoing the empty look within. Hux thinks of the rumours surrounding the boy and his family, and wonders more avidly now which are true.

They approach the stables. From the slight rise upon which they’re situated, Hux can see the road into town — and is startled to see an unfamiliar carriage making its way down said road, toward the Huxleys’ estate. He frowns, glancing at his watch: they aren’t expecting anyone, and anyway it’s far too early for visitors — _unless…_

Spurring Millie over the last few yards to the stables, quickly dismounting and unsaddling and brushing her with less gentleness than usual — “Sorry, my girl,” Hux tells her when she nickers in irritation, her master having tugged too hard at a small snarl in her mane — Hux is soon striding rapidly back up to the house, all his ride-induced calmness dissipating in the wake of the realisation that Ben Organa-Solo is coming to call.

 

* * *

 

“Do you think they’re home?” Rey asks with concern, standing on the door-step of Huxley Hall with Finn and their cousin after having rung the doorbell twice. Rey presses her face to the glass to peer through the windows on either side of the grand front entrance, but can’t make anything out.

“Perhaps we’ve come too early,” Ben suggests, thinking longingly of the bed he’s so recently vacated, at his mother’s insistence that he accompany his cousins. He shuffles his feet, all but ready to go and find the Huxleys’ stables, retrieve the carriage and coachman, and turn back home at once — and then lock himself in his room and sleep or draw or do anything but this.

“It’s only ten-thirty,” Finn agrees. “We could have.” Behind Rey’s back, he smiles: Luke had cautioned Rey that to go so early to the Huxleys’ could be considered impertinent or even downright _rude,_ but she had been so eager as to scoff off her father’s warnings and remind him that “we were _invited!”,_ as if that settled things outright.

Rey sighs, turning back from the door — “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to come back later,” she says, disappointment writ large on her pretty face — but just as she finishes her sentence, one of the heavy doors swings open behind her. She turns back to it in surprise: Ben’s and Finn’s heads jerk up, and all three are startled to see the younger Huxley appear in the doorway, smiling cordially.

“Hello,” Hux says in a tone of forced pleasantness, hoping that his appearance betrays no hint of his mad dash back from the stables — he’d been upstairs fixing his dishevelled hair, but hadn’t had time to change out of his dusty riding clothes before he’d heard the bell ring for a second time. He senses that his face is still unattractively flushed, and conceals his irritation as he ushers the unwelcome visitors inside: “Do come in.”

“It’s lovely of you to have us back!” Rey enthuses obliviously, stepping inside and looking around with delight. “Oh, it’s even nicer in the daylight,” she gushes of the foyer — which, yes, is striking, with high windows letting in the summer light and guiding it to fall on the many splendid artworks adorning the walls.

“Thank you,” Hux acknowledges, ducking his head just slightly. He smiles, and here Ben notes a trace of strain in his eyes: though his voice and mannerisms are perfectly composed, Huxley looks harried, and Ben feels vindicated in his supposition that yes, they are calling too early.

 _Oh well._ The thought of having shaken the unflappable Huxley cheers Ben somewhat — he’s not the only one feeling out of sorts this morning, now. Mollified, he smiles slightly to himself as Huxley gestures that they follow him, and they all proceed through the halls of the manor behind him.

“I’m afraid I can’t offer you much to eat or drink,” Hux says over his shoulder. “We haven’t yet gotten the week’s provisions from town, and I polished off the last of the eggs before my ride this morning.”

This seems, to Ben, like a slight accusation — further confirmation that they’re here at an unacceptable hour — but Rey doesn’t seem to pick up on it: “That’s all right!” she assures him. “We had breakfast at home.” She smiles. “Your _ride,_ though, did you say? Ben’s a horseman himself,” she tells him, nudging Ben in the side.

Ben frowns at her. “I’d hardly say that.” He recalls, yes, having cursorily mentioned to Rey that he’s looking forward to exploring the riding trails on their new estate while he was showing her around yesterday; but that was more as something to _say,_ considering he hadn’t cared to tour the grounds before, and thus didn’t have much to tell his cousin about them. He doesn’t know where she’s gotten the idea that he’s any kind of equestrian.

“Is he?” Hux asks of Rey as if he hadn’t heard Ben’s response. They come to a stop at the end of a long echoing corridor. The walls are hung with, Ben notes, actual _tapestries,_ and old ones, too — he’s just processing this when Finn, in front of him, stops walking and Ben nearly walks into him.

Hux notices. Ben call tell by the way he flicks his haughty eyes to him, just for a second, and lifts his chin just slightly, the barest smirk playing on his full lips. Ben flushes and averts his gaze, and then Hux says smoothly, “Well, here we are,” opening the doors and ushering them in.

At first glance the library is magnificent. Mahogany bookshelves line the walls, all full nearly to bursting; a locked glass-fronted cabinet in the corner appears to contain shelves of old, crumbling, doubtlessly priceless tomes. The air is musty but comfortable, with motes of dust floating in the sunbeams let in through the many windows. A marble fireplace sits cold, no logs in the hearth due to the time of year, and three dusty, plush velvet armchairs wait in a convivial circle near it: _father’s, mother’s and son’s,_ Ben realises suddenly.

And then, all at once, the splendour of the library is lost. Up close, the bookshelves are weary-looking, collapsing under the weight of books and years; the window-panes have delicate cracks from winter after winter of frost, and the marble of the fireplace is chipping. Like Huxley had said last night, _these books are meant to be read;_ but it is clear that before Rey, Finn, and Poe’s visit last night, this room hadn’t been used in years.

Ben casts a glance at Huxley, who hasn’t moved. As Rey and Finn go at once to the bookshelves — pulling spines out with care, searching, it looks like, for the same books they’d had to leave behind the night before (strange: Ben hadn’t thought that they’d actually been _reading)_  — Huxley looks around the sad beautiful room as if caught in a trance. Ben sees him swallow hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath the white silk of his cravat, and he wonders what memories this library holds; imagines a happy childhood being sealed away with the turn of a key, a private Eden lost forever.

Hux feels Ben’s gaze on him, and turns his head slightly. Ben looks away at once, goes to the nearest bookshelf and starts running a purposeful finger along the row of titles there. Hux watches him, and the two others, without really seeing them. Soon after his mother’s death Hux had moved all his own books and those he needed for school into one of the unused rooms upstairs, claiming it as his study and subsequently refusing to spend more than five minutes in the library. It was too dear to him, and his mother, _before;_ and now every corner of it is replete with memories and ghosts. The very air feels cloying, choking. Hux lifts a hand to tug at his cravat, loosen it, prevent the room from suffocating him — and then, desperate, he says, “Mr. Organa-Solo?”

Ben turns, looking up in surprise from a book that’s apparently piqued his interest. “Yes?”

Hux clears his throat. “Would you care to see the stables?”

Ben is about to protest, reply that Rey was being over-polite, that his skills as a rider are modest at best — but then he catches Hux’s eye and sees something bleak there. The other man’s jaw clenches as he waits for Ben’s reply, and Ben realises that this is a cry for help; this is a last resort. _So I wasn’t wrong._

“Certainly.” Ben keeps his tone neutral, not letting on that he’s seen Hux’s distress. The earl’s son’s face visibly relaxes, and he drops his left hand from where it had been fiddling with the knot at his throat.

“Wonderful,” Hux says coolly. He speaks up to get Rey and Finn’s attention, and Ben notes that his tone becomes immediately more courteous: “Spend as much time here as you’d like,” he tells them, sounding every inch the gracious host. “If I could only trouble you to put everything back where you found it?”

Receiving energetic nods from the two, who immediately return to their excited discussion of some book or other, Huxley turns on his heel and strides out the door, motioning carelessly to Ben.

“Follow me.”

 

* * *

 

Hux walks fast through the halls of the manor, Ben following quickly behind. He goes blindly to the stables, his riding boots crunching on the gravel drive and then treading silently over the grass (mown yesterday for the party, for the first time in — months? Years? Hux can barely recall). Ben, with his long long legs and inch or two of height on Hux, could easily keep pace, outstrip him in no time; but he’s lagging behind, letting Hux lead the way across the parkland and up the hill to the stables. Hux unlatches the door and then goes at once to the cupboard containing grooming supplies. He roots through the brushes and hoof-picks until he finds what he needs: a battered pack of Gold Flakes and a half-empty matchbook.

Ben watches in mild surprise as Huxley puts a cigarette between his lips and strikes a match almost violently. He lights the cigarette and takes a deep pull, closing his eyes, and Ben waits.

“Hux,” he asks finally, watching the cherry of the cigarette flare and fade with Huxley’s breaths, “is everything all right?”

“Yes,” Hux replies coldly. He takes a final drag and crushes the stub underfoot, and then gives a deep shaking sigh. “Thank you.” He turns abruptly and goes to the nearest stall, over the gate of which a beautiful sorrel mare is straining against her bridle, her eyes fixed on Hux. He lifts a hand to stroke her nose and says, not looking at Ben, “These are our horses — my father’s Starlight over there, and the coach-horses, and this is my Millicent,” he lists off, scratching behind the sorrel mare’s ear. Ben hears a note of real affection creep into his voice when he speaks of his own horse, and it reassures him, somehow.

“We have several miles of riding trails on the property; I believe some of them connect with the ones on your estate,” Hux now informs Ben with the barest note of distaste, turning from the horse and leaning against the wall with one leather-booted foot crossed primly over the other. “Perhaps we’ll run into each other one day.”

“Yes,” Ben agrees in the same tone of detachment. “Although I confess I’m not the sportsman Rey seems to think I am. I didn’t have much chance to ride in the city.”

“Well, would you like to?” Hux surprises them both with the offer, hardly knowing from where his next words come: “It’s a fine day, and the coach-horses are gentle, they won’t mind being ridden by a stranger. We could take a tour of the property; it would be much more efficient than walking.”

Ben’s eyebrows lift just slightly. He hadn’t expected Huxley to want to spend any more time with him than he had to, and he himself still wants nothing more than to go home and return to his solitude; but on the other hand, he _does_ enjoy riding, and it has been a while. _And the weather is lovely…_

“Yes, I think I’d like that,” Ben decides.

And so Hux saddles up one of the coach-horses and leads him and Millicent outside, and swings up onto Millicent’s back as Ben mounts the old horse. Hux takes up his reins, sitting perfectly upright in the saddle, and watches Ben.

He’s not wearing the right trousers, or boots, and he doesn’t have a natty jacket like Hux’s; but soon enough Ben is in the saddle and looking despite it all like some mediaeval prince riding off to war. His dark hair hangs free, and his long hands hold the reins with a nonchalant precision. Hux finds his gaze catching as one of those hands reaches up to brush Ben’s long hair out of his eyes.

“Shall we?” Ben asks tentatively. Hux snaps back to attention.

“Yes.”

And he takes off down the trail at once, leaving Ben scrambling to catch up.

Hux digs his spurs into Millicent’s sides, acutely aware of Ben riding close behind. He’s irritated with himself —  _what was I thinking, what are we doing? —_ and yet more with the sight of Ben looking like _that_ , like an arrogant angel on that old horse, with his legs and his _hands —_

 _Enough._ Hux pushes Millicent onwards, urging her un-gently into a trot. The trail winds around a bend, entering the woods on their property; leafy shadows dapple Hux’s face and back. Behind him, Ben too is picking up his pace: Hux hears the quickening rhythm of hooves on the ground and Ben’s voice softly urging the old horse into a canter.

They pound out of the woods at a gallop, sunlight streaming in full force as they leave the shadow of the trees, and Hux tries to empty his mind completely, think only of his horse under him and the trail ahead, spurring her faster, faster, and gritting his teeth, nothing but the wind in his ears and his muscles working, thinking of nothing, nothing, not Ben, _nothing —_

And then — “Hux!” Ben calls, and Hux stops abruptly, reining Millicent in too hard and receiving an angry neigh from her in return. He bites his lip in annoyance and feels sweat beading at his hairline, his heart pounding hard in his ears.

“What is it?” Hux asks impatiently, as Ben draws to a halt next to him.

“Where are you racing off to?” Ben asks, panting. He reaches up to brush his hair out of his eyes again, tucking the dark strands behind his ears.

“I’m sorry,” Hux says icily. He sighs, regretting his decision all the more; Ben’s face is slightly flushed, his chest rising and falling quickly. His shirtsleeves are pushed up, revealing leanly muscled forearms dusted with dark hair; and there are those hands, long and bony and handsome, slackly holding the reins. Hux looks up. “Shall we go back, then?”

Ben nods, bashful in his relief. “If you don’t mind. It wasn’t much of a ride,” he apologises uncertainly.

“It’s fine.” With quick fluid movements Hux strips off his riding jacket, draping it round his shoulders and tying the sleeves in front, pushing the cuffs of his crisp shirt up to his elbows. His lean arms are pale: Ben doesn’t know if he imagines the light smattering of freckles on the strong delicate wrists.

Expertly Hux turns Millicent round so they’re facing back in the direction they came; without another glance at Ben, he clicks his tongue and urges her forward, heading back into the woods at a neat trot.

Ben follows slightly behind, relieved at the slower pace and also hesitant to catch up to Hux: the other man had seemed irked by his presence, as if he was used to riding alone and didn’t know what to do with another person there. He recalls the way Hux had sped ahead, guiding his horse with the skill of a jockey round the twisting trail and through the woods; bent over the saddle in intense concentration, handling the reins and the horse with adroitness and care. He’d been completely unaware of anything but himself, the horse, and the terrain ahead, lost in a determined reverie.

Up ahead, now, Hux sits proud and tall in the saddle, posting with the rhythm of the trot, his white shirt sticking to his back in places: Ben’s eyes are drawn to the way the fabric clings to the slim curves of muscle underneath. His red hair is defiantly bright against the muted tweed and crisp white linen of his riding attire.

Even in the heat, and even with his jacket off and cravat loosened, Huxley is still dressed impeccably; his hair is still perfectly in place. And Ben wonders, just for a second, what it would take to truly shake Hux’s composure: to rattle him, discomfit him, make him _feel_ something; to shatter the façade and find out what’s underneath.

In silence they arrive back at the stables. Ben is tired and over-warm, the sun heating his dark hair and beading sweat on his face. Hux dismounts and motions for Ben to do the same, and then leads the horses one after the other back into their stalls, apparently not trusting Ben to do so himself. Ben follows him in and leans against a post in the welcome shade. He watches as Hux efficiently but gently sponges-down and brushes the two horses, talking softly to them all the while and feeding them each a sugar cube when he finishes.

“Thank you,” Ben says awkwardly, when Hux turns back to him, wiping his brow and untying the jacket from around his neck to fold it over his arm. “For the ride.”

Hux looks at him in mild surprise, as if he’d forgotten Ben was even there. “Oh, you’re welcome,” he says distractedly, sounding almost — happy. He catches Ben’s eye and gives him the barest trace of a smile; and then all at once he breaks eye contact and pulls out his pocket-watch, frowning. “We’d best be getting back; your cousins will be waiting,” Huxley says; and now his voice is just as chill and distant as it had been the night before.

 

* * *

 

For most of May after the visit to the Huxleys’, life at Millennium House is quiet. Luke and Leia are busy getting the house in order, making trips to town for this errand and that, meeting with the cook and the gardener and the stable-hands, and slowly falling into a rhythm of something like normality. Ben, to his mother’s consternation, ignores her requests that he socialise more, and still spends the bulk of his time in his room; but he’s no longer sleeping the day away, instead reading one book after another, anything he can find — and sketching.

His drawings are slowly coming back to life. They’re not exciting, not particularly prodigious; they’re ordinary things, the tree outside his window and the large pond in the distance, faces he recalls from New York or the voyage overseas — but every day they are less and less his nightmares.

(He thinks sometimes to take one of the horses and attempt a trail ride, both hoping for and fearing a chance meeting with Huxley, but he can never work up the courage.)

Rey and Finn, for their part, spend much of their time outdoors, wandering the grounds and the surrounding moors, and more often than not coming home with arms full of wild berries or flowers, Rey’s nose ever more freckled and her hair falling out of its pins. And by the end of May, Poe Dameron has become a regular visitor to Millennium House.

He’ll drop by for a short visit during the week if he can; these are usually limited, much to all parties’ displeasure, to tea in the drawing-room. But at the week-end, they change their routine. The Skywalkers don’t always attend church — Luke is a believer, but usually prefers private worship to public mass; Rey will accompany him if he does choose to go into town for the service, but Finn prefers to stay home. But every Sunday, after the Catholic service that the Damerons frequent, Poe will take a detour on the way home and stop by to visit them, staying all afternoon and sometimes for dinner, too.

They have come to expect him promptly at twelve-thirty. In the moments before, Rey is restless, picking up a book and then laying it down, smoothing down her skirt with restless hands, springing up from the drawing-room couch and pacing in quick, light-footed circles. Her aunt will smile down at her sewing or her book, hearing Rey say anxiously, “It’s twenty-five past, do you think he’ll come today?”, and there is Finn quick to reassure her that yes, of course he will, he’s never late — and, indeed, the moment the clock strikes half-past the hour, so too does the doorbell ring.

Cecil has learned to ignore it, for there already is Rey, flying from the parlour and down the hall beaming, Finn hot on her heels. Then comes her exclamation, as if surprised, every time — “Why, Poe! How good to see you!” — and his exuberant response, accompanied by a deep, earnest bow and a kiss on the hand for Rey, and always, always a warm embrace for Finn (he looks forward to Sundays all week):

“Miss Rey! And Finn! Hello, hello, good afternoon!”

A chorus of greetings, of _how-do-you-dos,_ as if they had been apart for months or years instead of a mere few days. And then the suggestion of a walk will be made, or a picnic, and off they will go, all three. Officially, Finn is Rey’s chaperone — for she needs one, now: Poe Dameron is courting her.

Finn walks a few paces behind them as they link hands on the path, glancing over their shoulders to make sure they’re out of sight of the house, smiling in giddy conspiracy as they do. When they beckon him closer — “Come, Finn, they can’t see us!” — his heart leaps, and he goes, smiling shyly; but still he maintains a slight distance, not wanting to intrude. When they sprawl out on the picnic blanket, Rey’s head in Poe’s lap, her eyes closed in bliss as he combs fingers through her hair, Finn sits to the side and tries to quell his longing: for her, for him, for them both.

He sees the way they look at one another, and knows they are falling in love. He tries to remember if Rey has ever looked at him like that _(yes,_ he is almost certain), and wonders if he looks at the two of them the same way, too.

_(Yes.)_

The last Sunday of the month, though, it rains hard all morning and into the afternoon. Twelve-thirty passes, and Poe is not there. The household have all become accustomed to his visits, and as the afternoon wears on, concerned and anxious glances are shot at the door not only by Rey and Finn, but Ben, making a rare appearance in the parlour with them, as well.

At one-fifteen, Rey heaves a sigh and turns to Finn, her brows knitted. “I suppose he can’t make it today,” she says mournfully. “He must be busy.”

“He must be,” Finn agrees, dejected.

They regard each other unhappily for a moment, and then Rey turns back to her embroidery. She struggles with it, as she has all day, her fingers impatient with the tiny, fiddly needle and tangling thread — and then finally gives a huff and sets it aside, deciding she’s spent long enough at the wretched pursuit. “Well, even if Poe can’t come, I don’t want to be inside any longer. The rain’s stopped; come, Finn, let’s go for —”

But she stops abruptly, interrupting herself. Her gaze has alighted on the window, and Finn follows it outside. Ben looks up, too, and then turns again to his sketchbook, uninterested. A rider is coming up the long path leading to Millennium House, just visible in the distance: Finn squints, and his heart leaps in hopeful recognition.

“Aunt Leia,” Rey calls eagerly. “Aunt Leia!”

“Yes, Rey, what is it?” Leia appears at the top of the stairs, wearing spectacles, with her fountain-pen in hand — she’s been in her study all day, catching up on lapsed correspondence. “Is something wrong?”

“There’s a rider coming up the drive,” Rey announces, and Finn can hear his own excitement mirrored in her voice.

Leia smiles. “You’re certain it’s not your father back from town?” she teases.

“No, ma’am,” Rey replies: Luke had an appointment this afternoon and isn’t expected back ‘til teatime. “He took the carriage, and this is just one rider. It’s Poe, Aunt Leia, it must be him!”

“Go, then,” Leia says, chuckling as she turns back to her study. “Go greet him.”

Rey flies to answer the door, even before the bell has rung. Finn trails her, and is there when she flings the door open to reveal a surprised-looking Poe, his finger still poised in the air. “Hello!” Rey exclaims, and Finn can see her restraining herself from flinging her arms about his neck. “You’re _late!”_

Poe holds his hands up in surrender, stepping over the threshold. “I know, I know! I’m so sorry. Flora threw a shoe on the way home from the service, and we had to stop off in town to get it repaired. Apparently the whole town needed horseshoes fixed today — the queue at the blacksmith’s was atrocious!”

“Hmm.” Rey seems somewhat satisfied with this, although she still chucks him under the chin for his troubles. “Well, you’re here now. We were worried, you know.”

“Were you?” Poe glances over her shoulder to Finn, hovering behind. “Both of you?”

Finn steps closer, shyly. “Yes,” he tells him. “Terribly.”

Poe grins at him — “Good” — and then, quite deliberately, winks.

Finn blushes. Rey giggles, delighted. “Come on,” she says, tugging at their arms. “Let’s go outside.”

The sun has come out again; the storm-clouds are nothing but gentle white wisps now, and the air smells clean and sharp and new. Her spirits buoyed by the warm weather, Rey decides to play tour-guide — “You haven’t been properly introduced to the grounds, you know, Poe” — and leads them all around the estate, chattering away about the rose gardens and the little orchard, seeming to have some titbit about each tree and each shrub on the property despite only having lived there a month.

“I just love this house,” Rey explains. “I feel I’ve lived here all my life!” Smiling, she lets Poe tuck a fresh-picked clump of violets behind her ear, and watches in glee as he presents a second one to Finn:

“For you,” Poe says, grinning. “May I?” he asks, and at Finn’s nod he carefully tucks it into the lapel of Finn’s waistcoat. “There!” Poe says in satisfaction. “A lovely pair you two make.”

“You must have some violets, too,” Rey says immediately. She scoops up another bunch of flowers and after a moment’s hesitation tucks them into the pocket of Poe’s jacket, so that their pretty blue heads peek out over the top. “There we are.”

All three smile at each other, conspiratorial in their delight; and then Rey loops her arms through each of the men’s and bids them carry on, the gentle May sunlight warming their backs and lighting their path.

In this way a sublime afternoon is spent, Poe’s lateness forgotten and absolved, and when the trio finally return to the house they are all laughing and perfectly content. Sorrowfully Poe looks at his pocket-watch and announces that he must get home for tea; and so Rey and Finn accompany him to the stables, all three dragging their feet so as to preserve this golden feeling for just a little longer.

The stable-hand fetches Poe’s handsome black mare and hovers patiently as the three make their goodbyes.

“You mustn’t be late next week,” Rey implores Poe. Finn nods his enthusiastic agreement: “Please,” he adds.

“I won’t, I won’t! You have my word,” Poe assures them passionately. He catches Finn’s eye for a moment, and Finn sees there sincerity and endless warmth. “For now, though, I _really_ must be going,” Poe adds regretfully; “so goodbye, my dear ones, and thank you for the pleasure of your company.”

With one last glance at each of them he turns to go; but then Rey says, “Wait!” and catches him by the arm.

Eagerly he turns back to her, questioning — and then quick as a flash Rey goes up on her tip-toes and presses a kiss to his lips. Poe, surprised, freezes for a second but then kisses her back, chastely and sweetly: Finn’s heart skips a beat. The kiss lasts mere seconds; when they break apart there is a slight pause, Rey grinning triumphantly and Poe flushing, pleased.

“Well, that’s hardly fair, now, is it?” he questions finally — and then before Finn knows what’s happening Poe has stepped closer to him, and now it’s Poe’s turn to rise up on his toes as he presses the briefest and gentlest of kisses to Finn’s lips.

Finn barely blinks and it’s over. Rey gives a little “ _Oh!”_ of surprise, and then Poe has stepped back, his eyes meeting Finn’s and his lip curving up. And then he is off, waving over his shoulder and calling, “Goodbye, goodbye!” as he mounts his horse, digs in his heels, and is gone down the driveway.

 

* * *

 

Ben is not at home here, yet.

They’ve been settled in at Millennium House since the beginning of the month, going on four weeks now, but Ben still does not feel that he himself has settled — a sort of lingering seasickness of the mind; he hasn’t found his land-legs yet. His mother worries, he can tell. She urges him, gently, to perhaps take the carriage or one of the horses into town, to explore his new surroundings and meet people of his own age — Leia herself has quickly befriended their neighbours, Winnifred McMahon and her husband Patrick, and suggests that Ben might get on with their youngest son Alfred, aged twenty. But Ben declines all her ideas, preferring to stay at home unless he is absolutely needed elsewhere. He takes long walks around the estate, sketchbook and pencils in hand, and in this way passes many solitary days —  _lonely_ days, he knows but will not admit.

The only person outside the family he thinks he might like to see again is Brendon Huxley the younger.

And even this confuses him. In their two brief meetings, Hux has been alternately disdainful and strangely courteous to him, hot-and-cold in a manner that befuddles Ben utterly. He had seen, or thought he’d seen, a different man beneath Hux’s crisp haughty veneer: first when he’d mentioned his mother, at the ball (the sadness that briefly softened his sharp features, the wistful faraway look in his eyes), and then again on their ride, when he’d been impassioned and lively and, Ben dares think, _happy._ But that happiness had not been on Ben’s account.

He can tell he’s made no great impression on the high-minded earl’s son; he had never expected to. But now he finds himself wishing he had.

Every time the doorbell rings when someone comes to call, if Ben is at home — reading or drawing in the parlour, perhaps, or eating supper with the family in the dining-room — he finds himself glancing quickly to the door, ears pricked, expectant. For some reason he always hopes that Hux will have come by: _why,_ Ben can’t imagine, but in the moment that hardly matters. Every time it isn’t him (it is, most often, Poe Dameron, or else a telegram from London for Luke), Ben feels a strange and senseless disappointment.

_He didn’t even like you. Why would he come to call?_

A voice of reason in Ben’s head reminds him that Huxley had extended an open invitation to him and Rey and Finn to come by his own house and make use of the library. They have done so once, of course, but none of them have ever spoken of going back. Even though they were invited, Ben feels, and suspects Rey and Finn do too, that they would be intruding on the strange and removed universe that the Huxleys, father and son, now inhabit: apart from the parish, the county, the world.

 _And besides,_ Ben reminds himself, as one afternoon, bored, his thoughts wander down a path that looks suspiciously similar to the riding trail leading down to the Huxleys’ estate, _what would you gain from seeing him again?_ He himself feels no need to make friends here, when so soon he will be leaving for Oxford; and Hux has made it plainly clear that he does not want any, either. _So here we stand._

(He ignores the other voice in his head, the one that says _all summer alone, all summer like this, Oxford is not so soon as you think,_ and the next time the doorbell rings he keeps his eyes firmly fixed on his book.)

But no matter how reasonable his thoughts are during the day, at night he cannot control them. Too often he wakes, breathing hard, in the dead of night, from disturbing dreams — the same nightmares he has had for months now, reliving those last awful moments of his father’s life: the wheels spinning uselessly on the sinister ice, the hellish shriek of the brakes as they failed; the shattering glass, and then the searing pain in his face, the warmth of blood pouring down to blind him; and the final, ominous crumpling of metal, the horrid ricochet of his father’s head against the pole. And then silence, that terrible silence.

These dreams — now so familiar to him, persistent ghosts that will not let him alone — now carry new traces. The scene shifts from hostile winter over the Hudson to the dusty, hallowed, ancient air of the Huxleys’ library in spring; and there is no screech of metal, no breaking of glass, here. There is a new silence, a kind one, and within the silence, whispers; and there is no pain, but rather a startling pleasure — no blood, but a different shade of red between his thighs…

He wakes from these dreams panting too.

He tosses and turns for hours, clutching his head in his hands, until he is exhausted enough to sleep again, mercifully without dreams. When he looks in the mirror in the morning he sees a haunted man. Dark rings under his eyes, his hair in frightful disarray, his cheeks a sickly pale but for the sanguine red of his scar.

His scar: how it shames him: a constant reminder of his culpability, his taint. He is guilty; he is damned; he is alone in his sin, and he is lying to himself. He is lonely, so lonely he feels it will eat him alive. Of course he wants friends. He wants friends, and more than friends: he wants love. His curse, he knows, is that he cannot have it, for it will turn to dust and blood in his hands.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mentions of violence and discussion of period-typical racism.

* * *

 

One afternoon in the first days of June, Finn has the house to himself. Luke took the train last night to London, to stay there a few days and see how his business partner Reg is getting on in running the orphanage without him; Ben has set out on another of his long rambles through the countryside, sketchbook and pencils tucked into a new waterproof rucksack; and Leia and Rey are in town for a meeting of the suffrage society, planning a fundraising tea.

Finn, although he loves nothing more than Rey’s company, and adores his adoptive father and aunt besides, was pleased, this morning, to wake up late, breakfast alone with a book, and now settle in in the parlour to continue his reading. He’s presently engrossed in Ezra Pound’s _Ripostes,_ a collection of poems he’s not sure he entirely understands, or even likes, but which fascinate him all the same. Before coming to live with Luke and Rey, he hadn’t understood that language could be put to use only for the sake of beauty, but the Skywalkers’ library taught him so; and Rey, herself, her very being, taught him of the kind of beauty that poets write about.

He is nearing the end of the twenty-third poem, and beginning to think about what to read next, when there is a knock at the door. Finn looks up, startled from his bookish trance, and glances around. Cecil is nowhere to be seen. Finn hears a scuffling downstairs, and then the old butler’s voice, sounding like he’s wringing his hands: “Coming, coming!”

The knock sounds again. “Don’t worry, Cecil,” Finn calls, setting down his book. “I’ll get it.”

He goes to the front doors and opens one a crack — and then, immediately, his heartbeat picking up, opens it wider when he sees none other than Poe on the doorstep. He hasn’t seen him since their walk with Rey last Sunday; but he has thought about Poe’s kiss each day since, turning it over and over in his mind like a worn talisman between his hands.

“Hello, Finn!” Poe exclaims, looking up. He steps forward and pulls Finn in for a warm hug. “Good to see you!” He squeezes Finn’s arm when they break apart.

“You, too,” Finn returns, aware that a bashful grin is spreading unstoppably over his face. He forces himself not to fix his gaze on Poe’s mouth, not to think of how soft it had been against his.

“Is Miss Rey in, by chance?” Poe asks.

Finn feels a deflation in his chest. Absurd as he knows it is, he had been half-hoping Poe might’ve been here just for him. “I’m afraid not,” Finn tells him reluctantly, for now he’ll go. “She and our aunt are in town. They’ll be out until lunch-time at least.”

“No matter!” Poe says, unaffected. “I was taking a gamble, I knew that much.” He pauses. “But what about _you,_ Finn?”

“What about me?” Finn’s heart skips a beat.

“Are you busy, right now?”

The _Ripostes_ cross Finn’s mind for a fraction of a second. He shakes his head, hope building. “Not at all.”

Poe beams. “Let’s go for a walk, then, shall we? I should like to spend more time with you.”

Finn smiles back at him, hesitant at first and then stretching into a grin, spurred on by the genuine warmth in Poe’s eyes. “Let me get my shoes.”

The weather outside is beautiful. Rain is predicted for this evening, but right now it’s full sun, the sky blinding blue and the air summer-soft. Finn and Poe step outside, Finn blinking in the bright light, and set off down the drive.

“Where is Rey today?” Poe asks, his hands in the pockets of his light trousers. He tips down the brim of his Panama hat to shade his face.

“In town at a suffragists’ meeting, with Leia,” Finn answers. Suddenly self-conscious, he adds quickly, “I am sorry she wasn’t in.”

“No, no, that wasn’t what I meant!” Poe hurries to assure him. “I was only curious. I’m glad of the time with you.” He grins at Finn. “I’d like to get to know you better, Finn.”

Finn glances over, sees that smile still aimed at him, and almost blushes. “Likewise,” he answers. He thinks again, obsessively, of the kiss, but decides not to say anything about it unless Poe does.

“Well, let’s begin, then. Rey tells me you’re a writer?”

Now Finn _does_ blush, ducking away from Poe’s smile. “She shouldn’t’ve,” he protests. “I’ve never published a word.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not a writer. What do you write? Poetry? Prose?” They turn down the path that will take them to the woods, Poe leading and Finn content to follow; you wouldn’t know which of them lived here.

“I’ve been trying to write a novel for some time now,” Finn admits. “It’s more of a memoir, though, really, only with the names changed…” He trails off, embarrassed to admit this aloud, aware that he may sound unforgivably self-absorbed. But Poe exclaims in delight:

“A memoir! Well, that implies the leading of a _most_ interesting life — so if you may permit my impatience in not waiting to find it in the shop, do tell me about it. Where are you from?” Poe, eager as a child, wants to know. “Where did you live, before Mr Skywalker took you in?”

Finn answers both questions, grateful to remain in safe territory for now: “London.”

“What were your parents like?”

“I never knew my father.” At these words, Poe looks troubled; Finn hurries to correct him. “My mother left him before I was born. He was a drunk and a gambler; not a good sort.” He smiles. “She didn’t need him. I knew that for certain.”

“She raised you on her own, then?” Poe’s expression has smoothed over again, appeased.

“For a while, yes,” Finn replies. “She worked as a cook in a grand house when I was a baby, and the staff helped to take care of me too — even the ladies of the house. Three sisters, the Kendalls.” He smiles. “I don’t remember much from that time, but I remember how lovely they were. How kind.”

“Well, and then what? You didn’t stay with them?”

Finn hesitates. Appropriately, the path where they walk now grows winding and overgrown; Finn steps carefully, talking over his shoulder to Poe. “The sisters married, and eventually only one was left, Marion, the oldest. Left alone, she had to dismiss several servants — she couldn’t justify maintaining a full staff for herself — but my mother kept her post, because she was fond of her, and of me. But then Marion married as well. She had to sell the house and move to Spain with her new husband.”

“And so? Did you go with her?”

Finn shakes his head. Although his warm, safe early childhood is faded and distant now, replaced by colder, darker years, these memories still bring a tug of sadness. _How different things became._

“We were supposed to. But before the wedding, my mother got sick.” He hesitates. “It was over quickly.”

“Oh, Finn.” Poe stops abruptly on the path, and lays a hand on Finn’s arm, his face telegraphing genuine sorrow. Just as Finn had known he would, he understands. “How old were you when she passed?”

 “Just five.” Finn half-shrugs. “I hardly remember her now.”

“What was her name?”

Finn looks down. “I don’t even remember that,” he says quietly, after a moment. “She was only ever _Mummy_ to me, and _Cookie_ to the sisters. I didn’t know her real name.”

This elision pains him to this day, though he knows it is not his fault. After she died his mother was not buried in her own plot, but in a mass grave at the hospital. For years Finn dreamed of laying her to rest somewhere peaceful — once he’d made his fortune somehow, and built a life for himself, of course — but that dream was extinguished the day he realised he wouldn’t know how to mark the headstone; would have no name to bury her with. It is among his only shames.

“I’m so sorry, Finn.” Poe leaves his hand on his arm — in fact tucks it under, and begins walking again. Finn falls into step at his side, feeling warmth radiating through him from where Poe’s fingers touch him. “What happened to you after she died? Did Marion and her husband take you in?”

There is such hope in his voice, such innocent optimism, praying that the _right thing_ will win out. But Finn had learned, far too young, that this is rarely the case. He shakes his head again, feeling touched and saddened by Poe’s determined belief in goodness.

“She thought to — she couldn’t have her own children, she was delighted at the prospect of adopting me — but her husband wouldn’t have me.”

He stops there, hoping Poe will fill in the rest; but this time he does not.

 “But whyever —” His brow wrinkles.

“He was white,” Finn says gently. “He didn’t want…someone like me living in his home, bearing his name, inheriting his estate once he died. He couldn’t stand the thought of it. They rowed awfully, with me in the room — he said such terrible things, as if I couldn’t understand them.” He did, though, and he remembers them now; he will not repeat them to Poe. “Marion tried, but in the end her husband won out. They moved to Spain, and there was no-one else to take me in; so I was turned out onto the streets.”

“At five years old,” Poe breathes. “My God, Finn. You must have been so brave.”

“You learn to survive very quickly.” Finn swallows, caught off his guard by the tightness in his throat. “I fell in with a gang of some other boys, in the East End, and we became a sort of family. For many years I was the youngest; they looked out for me. They shared what food they had with me, whenever they could find it, and we slept all piled-up in back alleys and doorways or under the bridges, a big heap of boys keeping each other warm. We were the best of friends. We were like brothers.”

Finn glances at Poe, afraid he’s boring him, but finds his gaze still fixed on him, riveted and concerned. He has reached the point in his tale that is the hardest to tell — but, heartened by Poe’s interest, by his very presence, Finn goes on. “But after a few years, they suddenly started disappearing. One after another, just _gone._ The rest of us were frightened; we thought they’d been killed, or worse.”

“What happened?” Poe’s frown deepens.

 “A…religious group had begun to take them in. They were brought in off the streets and given food and beds and clothes, and schooling besides.” Finn breaks off, remembering the intensity of his longing when he had found out: _school,_ that impossible dream, the one thing he wanted more than anything. How quickly that dream had become a nightmare. He takes a deep breath and carries on.

“Eventually, from the dozen or so of us who ran together, it was just me and one other boy, Slip, left. All our friends had been taken. We were frightened — we were the youngest, and although we’d toughened up, we still relied on the older boys’ protection. We didn’t know where they’d gone; we felt we’d been abandoned.”

The memories of those cold, vulnerable weeks still find Finn at night, even safe in his warm bed. But worse than those weeks with Slip on the streets were the intervening years before Luke took him in: his time with the First Order.

“Who were this religious group? Monks, or Quakers, or something like that?” Poe asks.

Finn sighs. “I wish they’d been. No — they were something completely different. They called themselves the First Order.” He glances at Poe, to see if those dread words mean anything to him, but his expression doesn’t change. “Have you heard of them?”

“No.”

“You’re lucky.” Finn bites his lip, grappling for words to explain the worst years of his life. “They’re…a fringe group, to say the least,” he begins. “A tiny sect, bearing no real resemblance to any church you might know. They’re fanatics, really.”

“And they found you? Took you?”

Finn nods. “When Slip and I were finally snatched, like the others had been, we were separated at once. They gave us numbers instead of names. We were crammed into this great, dark, creaking old house, dozens and dozens of us, but if we saw someone we’d known before, we weren’t allowed to acknowledge them. The idea was that we’d been reborn, with no attachments to our former lives. They disciplined us quite harshly if ever we forgot that rule.”

The night they were taken, he and Slip had been locked in separate bedrooms with a dozen other children apiece, given ill-fitting new “uniforms” of stiff grey cloth, and made to repeat their new “names” over and over until they sank in. Finn winces, remembering: _Two-one-eight-seven. Two-one-eight-seven._

In the morning, when the children (all orphans, or at least purported to be) were shepherded down to the cramped, filthy kitchen for breakfast, Finn had caught sight of Slip across the room, beside one of the older boys they used to know. He had called both their names, joyful and relieved to see familiar faces — and had been clipped so fiercely across the face by one of the Order’s “lieutenants” that he’d fallen to the ground, his cheek hitting the stone floor hard enough to break the skin and draw blood. He still bears the scar today; his fingers touch it, absently, now.

Poe’s eyes follow their path and Finn can see understanding dawn, followed by a flash of indignation. “Did they do that to you?” When Finn nods, Poe makes an aggravated sound. “But who _were_ they? Why did they take you in, and what did they do once they had you?”

“They wanted to make us into an army,” Finn says simply. “We had nowhere else to go; we were helpless and destitute, and they knew it. They knew they could do whatever they liked to us and no-one would ever notice we were gone. They indoctrinated us in their ways, drilled us and trained us and moulded them to their will. The thing is, we didn’t know _why —_ no-one could really tell what exactly they wanted to do, aside from grow their ranks as much as possible. There was always talk of some objective the higher-ups called Starkiller, but no-one knew what it was or why they needed us.

“But many of the recruits followed along without question. I suppose after a life on the streets — even a year on the streets, even a month — there’s not much that one _won’t_ do for a bed, even one you share with four other dirty children, and three meals a day, even if they’re cold and awful-tasting.” Finn grimaces wryly. “I can still taste that grey sludge they fed us. I’ve never since tasted its like and I hope never to again.”

“Did you follow along?” Poe says gently, in such a tone that Finn knows he understands the lengths to which Finn had to go to survive, and will not judge him for it. Finn’s heart aches to hear it.

“I tried,” Finn admits. The confession does not feel shameful, with Poe hearing it. “I fought my friends when they told me to. I hurt people — the other recruits, and strangers, too, when the Order sent us out on their bizarre missions. I learnt their propaganda and became a model soldier by the time I was twelve years old. They used me as an example. I did them proud.” He bows his head. “I hated myself for all of it. But it kept me alive.”

“That wasn’t truly you,” Poe asserts. “You only did what you had to, like you said. Don’t be ashamed.” And to Finn’s shock, Poe puts his fingers beneath Finn’s chin and tilts it up to look him in the eyes. “Do you hear me, Finn? You were innocent. You were a _child,_ and they kidnapped and manipulated you. Whatever it was they made you do — and I won’t make you say — it was not your fault.”

Finn feels his throat swelling tight with grateful tears. For years, he has tried to convince himself of this, but his own words do no good. He has been too ashamed to tell Rey or Luke everything about his years with the Order, and as such, he has offered them no chance to absolve him. He sees now how badly he has needed one.

“I didn’t always follow their rules,” Finn says. “There was once — we were sent out on a patrol, which meant we were to look for kids like us, in the places we’d used to live, and report back on them to our superiors so they could find them later. It was a horrible job; I hated it, I think we all did, except the few who’d really embraced the Order’s ideals — and we didn’t trust them, anyway. It felt like the worst kind of betrayal.” He shakes his head. “But anyhow — one day Slip and I were patrolling together, only I couldn’t call him Slip anymore, of course — and we got set on by the very kids we’d been sent to spy on. They’d seen us skulking about and planned an ambush, and they were successful. Slip was smaller than me, and they took him down quickly: they were beating him horribly, it was like nothing I’d ever seen. I suppose word had got out about the Order; they knew what our lieutenants’ uniforms looked like and where they’d be taken if they got snatched by them…and they took it all out on poor Slip.”

Finn shudders at the memory of his gentle friend on the ground, crying out, his nose a burst of blood. “The officer in charge of our patrol ordered the rest of us to leave Slip behind. The street children were all attacking him; with their attention focused, the rest of us could get away unscathed. And everyone else followed orders — they went with the officer, pelting full tilt back to headquarters. But I hung back. Slip was like my brother, you see: they’d taken us from one another, but they couldn’t undo our years of looking out for each other. I could never have left him behind.

“And I didn’t. I fought them off, and he got to his feet, and we ran, and it looked like we were going to make it — there was a safe house nearby, I remembered…but Slip had been hurt so badly. We had to stop running; they’d broken a rib, maybe several; he couldn’t breathe. His face was a mess — they’d mangled it; his nose was broken, his cheeks and forehead were cut up…” Finn swallows. “He died in my arms. He reached up to my face and left streaks of blood there. I felt them on my skin for weeks after.”

“Oh, Finn. You were too young to lose so much.” Poe’s grip on Finn’s arm tightens. Finn looks him in the eyes and sees boundless compassion there, and he finds in himself the strength to smile.

“But that was the same night I met Rey,” Finn continues softly. “I knew I couldn’t go back to the Order, not after what they’d done to Slip — and what they were doing to me. His death woke me up; I came back to myself, and I knew I didn’t belong with them and never had.

“So I ran. I went to the market, and I stole the first expensive thing I could find, because I knew I’d need money; the Order never let us have any of our own. It was risky, and I knew it, but I was hungry, and the jacket would fetch a tidy sum, keep me fed for a week or more. But the shopkeeper had these boys watching out for him, to see if anyone would pull the very stunt I did; and he sent them after me.”

“Bad luck,” Poe says, wincing in sympathy.

“It was, rather — but then it turned out to be the _best_ of luck, for Rey’d snuck out of Luke’s academy that night — she did that — and she decided she fancied a jaunt round the market. The boys had been chasing me for blocks, shouting _Thief, thief,_ and at that time of night, hardly anyone paid them mind. But Rey did. She joined in the chase.” Finn finds that he’s grinning. “She was wearing boys’ britches. Her face was filthy, her hair was tucked in a cap, and she was carrying a stick.” He shakes his head in admiration. “She was a right fiend with that stick.”

“I take it you speak from experience?” Poe’s eyes are mischievous.

Finn laughs, rubbing the back of his head. “Absolutely. She outstripped the gang and got to me first. I was looking over my shoulder, seeing her gaining on me, and considering tossing the jacket and giving up, going hungry until I found a better plan, or the Order found _me_  — and then she stuck out that stick and tripped me. Down I went, hard as anything; and she planted a foot on either side of me and _scowled,_ said, ‘These boys say you’re a _thief!’”_

He mimics her indignant tone with great affection. Poe laughs: “That’s our Rey.”

_“‘Wait,’_ I said,” continues Finn, “and I held my hands up in surrender. I told her yes, I’d stolen the coat, but that I needed it for money, so I could buy food. Slip’s blood was still on my face, I must’ve looked a fright; I don’t know why she didn’t just turn and run, or else hit me again — but suddenly her face changed, and she demanded, did I want to come with her?

“I didn’t even think. It could so easily have been a trick, another Order, and in the back of my mind I knew that; but I trusted her at once.” Finn smiles. “I said yes, I did. And so she dropped the stick and pulled me to my feet. She said, ‘Wait here,’ and grabbed the jacket from my arms.

“The boys had caught up to us by now (they were knackered, all panting, she was faster than any of them), and she marched up to the biggest one of them and gave it back. I remember I cried out, but she turned back to me and said, in that no-nonsense voice of hers, ‘Hush. Trust me.’”

“And you did,” says Poe. “Of course you did.”

“Of course I did,” Finn agrees. “I was stunned. The boys were stunned. She insisted that they take the jacket back to the shop and leave me alone. And they did: they turned tail and left. And Rey turned back to me, and asked if I was all right.” He pauses. “No-one had asked me that in years.

“I told her I was fine. She nodded, said ‘Good,’ and took hold of my hand. ‘We’re going somewhere safe,’ she told me. And we took off running. She was fearless, she knew the city well as anyone. We ran all the way back to Luke’s, never stopping even once.”

Finn looks over at Poe, shy, and smiles. “We were on top of the _world,_ Poe. I’d never felt exhilaration like that. I didn’t even know her name, but I knew that night that I’d follow her anywhere, if she only kept hold of my hand.”

Poe is smiling just as widely as Finn, by now. “That’s beautiful,” he says, squeezing Finn’s arm (he, too, still has not let go, and it thrills Finn.) “And you have.”

“I have,” Finn agrees. He is not normally so effusive with anyone but Rey; his outpouring of words has surprised him, but he knows, somehow, that Poe _understands,_ that he feels just this way about Rey, too, and will want to hear it all. Poe’s smile, so warm, now proves him right.

“Luke took you in,” Poe guesses now, “at Rey’s request; and soon enough no-one could remember either of you without the other. Joined at the hip. Thicker than thieves. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Finn laughs, nodding. “Absolutely right.” _And then came you,_ he thinks, not unkindly. Wondering, rather, what exactly this will mean, for the two of them: the three.

For although at first he had been afraid, had seen only one outcome to Poe’s being in their lives — his losing Rey — he wonders now, after Poe’s kiss, after today, if there might be another choice for them. _One where no-one loses. One where we all are loved, and love in return._ An addition, not a division. He has seen enough of those.

“And the Order never hurt you again,” Poe adds, hopeful.

Finn nods. “They never found me. Luke made sure of it. I didn’t tell him the whole story, but I suppose I said enough; I remember how his face darkened when I told him they’d tried to turn us into soldiers. He had heard of them; he hated them and what they did. He told me that I could forget what they did to me and start my life over with him and with Rey.” Finn shrugs, pleased. “He took me as his ward a few months later.”

“I admire you so terribly,” Poe says, shaking his head. “You and Rey both. I don’t know all of Rey’s story, but from what I do, and from what you’ve told me now, I can see that the two of you are without a doubt the bravest, strongest, _kindest_ people I’ve ever known. You’ve seen things, _lived_ things, that I can’t even imagine, and yet here you are, with hearts of gold. Your souls, I think, are made of something quite different than the rest of ours.” He smiles. “And whatever they’re made of, yours and hers are the same.”

“I think yours might be, too.”

Finn’s response is unthinking. As soon as he realises what he’s said, he tenses, looks up at Poe in a panic, afraid that even after all this, he now has gone too far — but Poe is smiling at him.

“I agree,” he says, and his voice is soft. “I think the three of us…well, I think we were meant to meet, that night at the Huxleys’. And if it hadn’t been there, it would’ve been somewhere, some _when_ else. I think we were meant to know one another, you and Rey and I.”

Finn nods, nods, nods again. Since that very first, magical night he has felt this; has never known how to say it, or even begin to try. “On that note,” he says, quiet, careful, at last feeling brave, “I have to ask you, Poe.”

“Yes? What is it?” Poe’s eyes so kind, full of concern.

Finn hesitates, and then finally comes out with it, the words that have been batting wings in his brain for days. “On Sunday, when you visited…when we said our goodbyes…” He pauses, feeling himself on a cliff’s edge again. “Was it a kindness?” he blurts.

Poe looks confused. “Was what —?”

Finn flushes. “When you said goodbye to me,” he repeats, unwilling to say the exact words, convinced for a gut-wrenching moment that he had imagined the whole thing. He wants to sink into the forest floor, his earlier bliss dissipating on the sudden breeze — but then Poe gives a laugh.

“Oh, Finn,” he says. “Do you mean — when I kissed you, was it only so that you and Rey would have an equal share? Is that what you mean by a kindness?”

Finn cannot look at him, to hear him say it aloud. _A kiss, a kiss, he has called it a kiss, it was real._ He nods, small.

Poe stops walking again. Finn stops, too. And then Poe’s fingers are on his chin, lifting it, lightly, and he is looking him in the eyes. Their faces are suddenly close, so close. “I meant that kiss,” Poe says. “I meant it for what it was. For what a kiss is. Do you understand?”

Finn is hardly breathing. _Brave,_ Poe had called him, and he wasn’t sure he believed him, but he knows he feels brave now. “Tell me again,” he thinks he says, and then Poe’s lips are on his.

“I meant it then,” Poe says, his hand cupping Finn’s cheek, when they break apart after a moment. “And I mean it now.”

“I can’t believe it,” Finn whispers, dizzy, leaning his forehead against Poe’s. It is dark and cool in the woods; they are shaded, safe, apart from the world. Finn feels he has left this realm, found paradise, here in Poe’s eyes, in his arms. _All that’s missing is her._ “I can’t believe that you — that you would, that I —”

“And why not?” Poe murmurs, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. He smells of cinnamon and brilliantine and Finn wants to fill his lungs with him.  “You astound me, Finn. You’re the best man I’ve ever known.”

Finn cannot say anything to this. He kisses him, instead.

“Poe,” Finn murmurs, when they break apart again some moments later. “Rey will be back soon.”

The thought had crossed his mind, even as they kissed, even as he experienced the greatest and most unlikely happiness he has ever known, his own personal miracle: _And what of Rey?_ Poe loves her. Finn loves her. She loves them both, and — Finn hardly dares think it — they love one another, too. Poe will have her. Finn has known this since they met, has long ago accepted it. _But what of me, now? Of us?_

Now, however, is not the time to talk of this. Finn does not want to spoil their bliss. And indeed, Poe’s face breaks into a grin at the mention of Rey. He catches up Finn’s hand: “Come,” he entreats him. “Let’s go back to the house and meet her.” He beams, and, impulsively, leans in and kisses Finn again. “Won’t she be happy.”

But they don’t make it back to the house before they see Rey’s figure silhouetted against the late-afternoon sky, coming down the hill towards them with one hand holding down her hat against the playful breeze. Finn’s heart gives a leap when he sees her, just as it always does.

“Rey!” Poe calls to her, waving broadly. “Dear Rey!”

“Hello, hello!” Rey calls back, hurrying down the hill, her arms thrown wide now in greeting. She is beaming, breathless, and her hat flies off, its ribbons streaming, as they run up to meet her and she throws herself into their arms, the two of them at once. Poe scoops the hat up and deposits it smartly back on her head, and then they stand there a moment, all three breathing hard, laughing, smelling of sweat and sun. “Oh, my dears,” Rey says, over their shoulders, sounding perfectly content. “Oh, my dear boys. How happy I am to see you.”

“And we you,” Poe says, pulling back. He keeps hold, though, of Finn’s hand. “We’ve missed you, today.”

Rey looks down at their clasped hands. She looks confused for only a moment. And then she looks up at them, first Poe, then Finn, and a beautiful smile breaks over her face. She leans in, and kisses them each on both cheeks, and then the lips. Her mouth is warm and tastes of summer.

“My boys,” she says again. “My own dear boys.”

 

* * *

 

After a cool May, June has proved itself wet and sunny. On the fifth, a memorial is held in London for the victims of the HMS _Empress of Ireland,_ shipwrecked in the St Lawrence River. On the seventh, a drunken motor engineer by the name of Henry Pike steals a cigarette case and a walking-stick from Buckingham Palace. On the ninth, it rains.

On the fourteenth there is a terrible storm. It catches Hux unawares. He and Millicent are returning from a morning’s hard ride all round the estate, inspecting the low boundary walls for signs of disrepair, noting hedges that need trimming and trees that need to be pruned. It’s a largely futile effort: the task of upkeep has fallen on Hux himself, his father having dismissed the groundskeeper and his wife along with all the other servants when Hux’s mother died, and Hux has neither the time nor the skill to maintain the vast acres himself. His annual survey of the grounds feels more like an itemised list of his own failings, and one that only grows longer with each passing year.

It is with this melancholy disposition that he enters the small wood on their property, sighing and taking one hand off the reins to fish in his pocket for his handkerchief. He mops his brow, grateful for the coolness of the shade after a morning spent in the sun; he can feel his ears beginning to burn. In the wood the air is humid, heavy. He stuffs the handkerchief back into his pocket and guides Millie over to the side of the path to let her rest for a moment. His legs ache. He closes his eyes.

Thunder rumbles overhead. Hux’s eyes snap open again, and he finds that the light filtering in through the trees has been obscured by dark clouds. He cranes his neck to the sky, and feels the first drops of rain on his face.

“Damn.” The brief sense of peace he had found is swept away at once. _I need to get back to the house._ He digs his heels into Millie’s sides, eliciting a disapproving whinny from her — her head had been bent over some tender shoots of grass — and they trek back through the woods at a trot. Hux’s riding-jacket is tied round his neck, and he un-knots the sleeves and shrugs it back on as the rain begins to come down in earnest, pattering steadily onto the green canopy above him.

The forest is dense, small as it is. As a child, Hux was frightened of it; where other children may have delighted in it, exploring the forest floor and climbing trees in summertime, Hux had refused to enter it even holding his governess’s hand. It was only after his mother’s death — when every familiar place suddenly became alien to him, crowded with too many ghosts — that he first ventured alone into the forest, to escape into an unfamiliar and strangely comforting solitude when his new reality became suffocating.

But he has never truly felt alone here. The ancient trees seem to have eyes; every rustle in the underbrush makes the hair on Hux’s neck stand up, even after all these years. As they venture deeper into the trees, it grows darker, and the thunder seems both louder and more distant, not quite of this world. The rain that streams down through the trees, plastering his hair to his forehead and causing Millie to shake her head every minute, is chilly and merciless. Hux cannot shake the feeling that they are being watched. He shudders and urges Millie onward: “Come on. Quickly, now.”

Up ahead, several paths diverge: Hux knows that one of them comes through from Luke Skywalker’s estate. From here, it might be quicker to go down that way and cut across their property back to the Huxleys’ stables. Hux is debating this prospect, reining Millie up and irritably wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, when a dark shape emerges from the trees ahead of him.

Hux, his heart jumping into his throat, gives a sharp shout — “Who’s there?” Millicent neighs in fright, rearing back. Instinctively Hux’s hand flies to his hip, but he was not hunting today; his Webley is safe in its locked drawer in his room. He is gripped with sheer panic for a moment — dark strangers in the woods, his childhood nightmares coming true — but then the figure comes closer.

“Hux, is that you?” it asks, its voice halting and familiar.

Hux clears the rain from his eyes again, and the nightmare creature is revealed to be Benjamin Organa-Solo, dripping wet and clutching something to his chest, looking as alarmed as Hux feels.

“Mr Organa-Solo,” Hux snaps once he’s found his voice. His heart is still thudding too quickly, but now perhaps not only due to fear. “What in God’s name are you doing out here? You scared me half to death.”

Ben quickly sidesteps a small deluge sliding down from the tree above him. His long hair sticks wet to his mole-speckled cheeks; he is only in shirtsleeves, and shivering. “I was drawing,” he explains awkwardly. “And then — well.” He gestures uselessly at their damp environs. “Why are _you_ out in the rain?”

“It wasn’t raining when we left,” Hux says, piqued. “I was surveying the grounds.” A tremendous crash of thunder prevents him from saying any more. Ben winces at the noise, and takes feeble shelter from the intensifying downpour underneath a stocky oak.

Hux is shivering, by now, his fine tweed jacket soaked. He decides he’s had enough. “Shall we wait it out here, then?” Hux shouts to Ben as another crack of thunder peals overhead. “Or shall we make a run for it, back to the house?”

“You mean, on the horse?” Ben shouts back. His hair is plastered down, exposing those oversized ears; he looks so young, even younger than his tender eighteen years. Hux feels a tug in his chest. “Both of us?”

Hux is already regretting his reckless suggestion, but it’s too late to take it back now. He nods. “You can mount without a block, I trust?” he asks impatiently, and Ben nods. “Then get on. Let’s go before it gets any worse.”

Looking grateful, if no more relaxed, Ben comes over to Millicent, who is swishing her head back and forth and nickering, sounding ever more agitated the harder the rain comes down. Hux keeps a tight grip on the reins, trying to hold her still. Ben hesitates, the book still held close to his chest.

Hux holds out a hand for it. “Give it to me,” he bids him. “I won’t look. _Hurry!”_ he chides, thunder booming to punctuate his words, when Ben hesitates further; and then reluctantly he hands it over.

Hux holds the sketchbook with one hand, taking the reins in the other. He glimpses, on the book’s cover, the name _Benjamin Organa-Solo_ inked in a careful, nervous hand. Behind him, Ben swings up onto the horse, grunting with the effort; Millie whickers at the extra weight, but doesn’t bolt.

“All set?” Hux asks, turning behind him to see Ben adjusting himself in what little room he has behind the saddle, wedged-up against the cantle. When he has settled himself, Ben’s back is pressed against Hux’s; their thighs touch. It’s undeniably intimate.

“Here you go.” Hux passes him the book, which Ben, after a second’s deliberation, stuffs under his shirt to keep dry. “Now hold on to me,” Hux requests reluctantly, fearful of how he might react — they have never touched before — will his flesh burn where Ben’s fingers meet it, will he read his secrets in his skin?

Hesitantly Ben places his hands on Hux’s waist. Those hands — large and strong; Hux notes with a primal thrill that they can almost span his waist, fingertip to fingertip. He nearly shivers, at this, and tells himself it’s because the rain is cold and he is soaked to the skin.

“Ready?” he asks again, and his voice is too low, unsteady. He bites his lip, hard, hoping Ben does not notice.

Ben nods. “Ready.” His grip tightens almost imperceptibly.

Thunder crashes, again, and a bolt of lightning transfigures the landscape to something washed-out, Asphodel-esque, as Hux digs his heels into his horse’s sides. They take off out of the woods and into the deluge.

Millicent’s hooves pound on the wet grass, kicking up water as she goes. She neighs unhappily as they ride into the wind and rain. Hux strains to keep his eyes open, his face spattered with cold droplets; the sky is almost fully dark overhead. He is acutely conscious of Ben’s body behind him, the scent of his dark hair drawn out by the rain. _Don’t. Enough._ He squeezes his thighs and urges Millie forward.

“Are we going to your house?” Ben asks from behind.

“Yours is closer.”

“Take the path over there,” Ben directs him, reaching over his shoulder to point to a winding gravel road becoming quickly muddied by the rain. “It goes right to the stables.”

Hux nods and steers Millie that way. The rain does not let up; Hux fights to keep a grip on the slippery reins. Soon, though, the Skywalkers’ stables come into view. They canter the last few yards and finally, finally rein up at the doors. Ben slides off the back of the horse — how soon Hux had grown accustomed to his hold around his waist — and races up to pound on the doors, clutching the book to his chest as he shouts for the stable-boy.

The doors are opened for them, and Hux rides Millie inside, a peal of thunder heralding their arrival. Ben stands to the side as Hux dismounts, handing the reins to the boy.

“Thank you,” he says wearily, pushing his wet hair off his face.

Ben is inspecting his sketchbook, flipping anxiously through the pages. “Thank you,” he says to Hux, when he’s finished looking it over. “It’d have been ruined for sure if I’d’ve walked home in this.” He gestures unnecessarily to the rain, still curtaining down outside.

Hux inclines his head. “You’re welcome.” Whatever strange intimacy they’d shared on their hell-bent ride has now dissipated, and the tug of possibility with it; they are back to their usual distance. Despite this, though, he has no desire to turn around and ride home in the weather; and so: “Might I – stay here until the storm clears?”

Ben’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Oh! — yes,” he stammers. “Yes, I’m sure — well, it’ll be tea-time soon, and the cook won’t have set enough cups —”

“That’s fine,” Hux interrupts awkwardly. “I’ll stay here with Millie.”

“No — I didn’t mean —” Ben breaks off, his huge eyes darting. “It’s fine,” he expels. “Come inside.”

The stable-boy’s newspaper is commandeered to wrap the sketchbook in, to protect it on their way to the house. They leave him tending to a disgruntled Millicent — Hux pats her damp nose and thanks her before he goes — and then they make a dash for it, up the path to the manor. It begins to hail just as they cross the threshold; it patters noisily to the ground, dwarfed by the slam of the front door as Ben pulls it shut behind them.

They are breathing hard. Hux is only now realising how tired he is. For a moment as they catch their breath, their eyes meet. Ben’s lips are parted, his chest rises and falls quickly, and when his gaze meets Hux’s, he gives a hesitant smile. “Quite the adventure,” he says.

Hux surprises himself by smiling, briefly, back — and then still further when that smile grows, and he gives a slight, embarrassed laugh, thinking of the terrible _drama_ of the howling wind and pouring rain, the horse’s whinnies and their shouts back and forth. “All very _Sturm und Drang_ ,” he replies, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. “Or should I say Brontëan, as you’re an English-literature man?”

Ben laughs, at this, and fiddles with the sketchbook in his hands. He hasn’t time to make a clever reply before footsteps come pattering down the corridor from the parlour:

“Ben!” Rey Skywalker exclaims, looking tousled and charming in a butter-yellow day-dress, her hair escaping its twist. “We wondered where you’d gotten to, once the storm hit. I _am_ glad you’re all right; you’re even back in time for tea — and oh!” She’s noticed Hux, and offers him a slightly perplexed but still radiant smile. “Hello! You’ve brought a guest!”

“Miss Skywalker,” Hux says, and steps forward to take her hand and bring it politely to his lips. “I apologise for intruding on your family’s hospitality; we got caught in the storm, and it was quicker to come back here with your cousin than to return to my own estate.”

 “It’s nothing,” Rey assures him. “Come in, come in, both of you — although perhaps you should dry off first.”

“Yes,” Ben blurts. “Ah — we should.” He bends to remove his muddied boots and then turns to Hux, painfully shy. “There are spare towels upstairs, and you could…borrow some dry clothes of mine, if you wanted,” he mumbles. He fights not to flush to the ears: he can feel Rey’s penetrating gaze on him, and prays Hux doesn’t notice it too.

“Thank you,” Hux says, surprised. He had not expected such an offer; it seems almost unbearably intimate, although he knows for certain that it was not intended that way. He clears his throat, and quickly dispatches himself of his tall riding-boots, laying them carefully so as not to dirty the floor further. “Lead the way.”

Rey disappears back into the parlour, calling brightly to the maid to please set one more place for tea, and Ben goes up the stairs two at a time. Hux hurries to keep up with his long reaching strides. Ben leads him down a long, windowed corridor, passing open doors that reveal a series of rooms decorated in a handsome, if slightly outdated style, presumably belonging to Ben’s mother, uncle, cousin, and Finn, in some configuration. The last room at the end of the hall has its door closed; Ben pushes it open.

Hux follows him into his bedroom. The bed is a four-poster, of cherry-wood, sturdy and dense; the escritoire, standing on slender cabriole legs, matches it. The west wall has a large sash window which the escritoire faces; it is streaked presently with rain, and gives a grim view of the still-raging storm outside as the hail pings and thuds against it. There is a Turkey carpet on the floor, faded with age, and in the corner a wardrobe topped with scalloped curves stands with one door half-ajar. The room looks comfortable enough, but could easily belong in a hotel: it lacks personal touches, and you would hardly know that an eighteen-year-old boy lived in it, were he not presently going to the wardrobe and rifling through his clothing. _He’s still not settled in._

“There are fresh towels in there,” Ben says, poking his head out from the wardrobe and gesturing with his chin to a small linen-chest that Hux had not noticed. “Could you get two out, please?”

Hux complies, and begins gratefully to pat down his dampened face and cool, wet hair. Ben has succeeded in finding two sets of dry clothes; he tosses them on the bed and picks up the second towel, going immediately to squeeze out his still-dripping long hair. He runs his fingers through it when he’s finished, half-parting it back into place, and Hux is involuntarily distracted by what those fingers might feel like caressing his own scalp, tugging gently or not so on his hair. He bites his lip, hard.

“I think those should fit you,” Ben says, looking up and noticing Hux waiting. He gestures to the clothes on his bed.

“Thank you.” Hux crosses to the bed and picks up a shirt (black) and trousers (black, too; he assumes leftover mourning garb). He hesitates, wanting to ask if he should go somewhere and change — but Ben has already begun undoing his braces, apparently uncaring whether Hux is here or not. The informality startles Hux: _Well, he is American,_ he thinks absurdly. He is torn between public-school propriety and the army’s total lack of privacy for one brief, tantalising moment, and then decides firmly in favour of the latter. He begins to unbutton his waistcoat.

Ben remains intently focused on getting out of his wet clothes. He lays his suspenders —  _braces, I suppose I mean —_ aside and now starts on his shirt, soaked and clinging to his skin. His heart is beating: he had taken a wild gamble in staying in the room and not offering Hux somewhere else to go, and from the corner of his eye he can see it’s paying off. Hux’s waistcoat is on the floor and his hands are moving, quick and deft, to his shirt-buttons. Ben swallows and shucks his own shirt before beginning on his trouser fastenings.

Hux does turn away when he gets down to his vest and drawers, feeling it a step too far to stay facing Ben in this state. He’s not been provided with a fresh set of drawers. This, firstly, would have meant stripping naked, with Ben in the room; and, secondly, _wearing_ a pair of Ben’s… These thoughts bring in quick succession a blush to his cheeks and a vivid heat further below. He steps hurriedly into his borrowed trousers and wills himself angrily to remember his situation.

At almost the same moment they turn back to each other, fully dressed again. Ben’s clothes hang loose on Hux’s frame; though they are of a height, Ben is much broader in the shoulders and arms than Hux, and his waist is thicker besides. Hux has rescued his belt from his own sodden trousers and used it to cinch Ben’s up tightly, but they are still a sight large, giving the impression that he has recently lost several stone and his wardrobe has not yet caught up.

Ben was unprepared for his heart to skip a beat, seeing Hux, looking slighter, slenderer than ever, in his clothes; he had been on the point of saying something, but freezes with his mouth slightly open. Hux looks expectantly at him, and Ben recovers quickly: “Shall we?” he stammers out. “I expect the tea’ll be ready by now.”

“Certainly,” Hux returns. His voice is all cool politesse, with no trace of the joking tint it’d carried earlier, or the passionate hoarseness of their frantic ride. He gestures. “After you.”

Rey breaks off her conversation with Finn and laughs at them as they come in, dressed in matching black and still bedraggled. “Look what the storm blew in! A pair of heathens from the moors,” she teases.

“Or a pair of Heathcliffs, if you like,” Hux returns, glancing at Ben. He gives a surprised smile, his crooked teeth showing, and Hux feels that tug in his chest again. He smiles back.

“Clever,” Rey laughs, and gestures to the chesterfield across from her. “Sit, sit!”

At her side on the divan sits the dark-skinned Finn. The unusual sight of a black man sitting not as a servant but as a member of the family comes as a pleasant surprise. Having essentially been raised by Rae as he was, Hux holds no prejudice against blacks, but the sphere in which he was raised and still moves most certainly does.

Finn stirs milk into his tea and gives a small but genial smile to Hux. “Hello, sir,” he greets him, evidently just as aware as Hux as the distinctions between them.

“Hello, Finn,” Hux replies cordially, and offers him a smile in return.

Leia presides from an armchair by the fire, wearing her spectacles and reading a letter held in her lap. Her brother helps Elsie, the cook’s daughter, to pour the tea and pass around the plate of biscuits, despite the girl’s stammering protests that it’s not his place to do so. Luke looks up, and smiles at his nephew and Hux.

“Hello, gentlemen! Rey said you’d be joining us, young Mr Huxley, but I admit I didn’t quite believe her,” he jokes. “How’s your father? I haven’t seen him in town for some time.”

“He’s well,” Hux answers half-truthfully, accepting a cup of tea from the maid and finding a seat on the chesterfield Rey had indicated; Ben, after a moment’s deliberation, sits down on the other end of the same one. “He’s been very occupied with business lately, trying to arrange for the sale of one of our properties in France, and another in the Cotswolds, before the summer begins.”

This is a lie. The task of selling these houses, which had been part of Hux’s mother’s estate, has fallen, like the rest, to Hux himself. The only business to which Brendon has lately been attending is that to be found at the bottom of a bottle.

“France!” Luke answers with interest, sitting down in the armchair next to his sister’s and squeezing lemon into his tea. “Whereabouts? I’ve been looking at purchasing a summer home there myself.”

“In the north, near Amiens,” Hux replies. He takes a scone from the plate on the table and crumbles it in half. “It’s lovely country; we holidayed there every summer when I was young. The house belonged to my mother.” He spoons thick jam onto his scone and takes a bite, not wanting to say any more: the house in France had been his mother’s favourite place, and they have not been back since her death.

“Was she French, Mr Huxley?” Leia wants to know. She’s looked up from her letter and removed her spectacles to let them hang around her neck. “I think Luke mentioned, once — her name was Marielle?”

“Yes,” Hux answers, surprised and touched that Leia, who never knew her, should remember. “And she wasn’t French by birth, no, but raised and schooled there. She spoke the language beautifully, and taught me how as well.” He sips at his tea, conscious of Ben’s gaze on him. “My father met her whilst on holiday, the same summer she finished school. He was much older than her, of course, but they were married by summer’s end, and living in his ancestral home by the start of the London season.” He inclines his head in the vague direction of Huxley Hall. “The house in Amiens was their wedding gift.”

“That’s lovely,” Rey says, smiling. “How romantic!”

Hux smiles back. “I think so.”

But talk of the summer-house pains him. The assumption had always been that, one day, Hux would bring his own wife, his own family, to spend summers in France; but now that he is grown, there is no wife, nor even a fiancée, a sweetheart, and no prospect of one that Hux can foresee. Now, faced with the debts accrued during Hux’s mother’s illness that Brendon has stopped caring to try and pay off, the property must needs be sold. Hux can’t help but feel that he has failed his mother in this, just as in so much else since she died.

Luke looks ponderous. “If it’s for sale, I certainly wouldn’t object to visiting,” he says. “Would you say the market’s favourable these days?”

“Oh, Papa, what does it matter? Let’s take a trip to France,” Rey cuts in, excited. “You only took me once, and Finn wasn’t with us yet, he’s never been! And Poe could come, too — oh, _do_ let’s go.”

“Now, Rey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Luke laughs. “Lord Huxley is trying to sell the house, not host a whole household of guests.”

“No, no,” Hux surprises himself by saying, setting his teacup down. It clatters in the saucer: Ben looks over.

Almost at once, half-formed images of France flash behind Hux’s eyes: long dinners on the terrace drinking the local wine; walks down by the river with the buttery sunlight on his back; late sultry nights in the bedroom he misses; soft voices in the dark, large hands so gentle on his skin —

He swallows. He feels Ben’s gaze and cannot look at him. “It would be good to stay there one more time before we sell it.”

Luke looks thoroughly surprised at the generous offer: _I am not my father,_ Hux wants to tell him.

Rey claps her hands in delight. “To France!” she enthuses. “Oh, Mr Huxley, thank you! When shall we go? When can we, Papa?”

Luke puffs out his cheeks and exhales a breath as he thinks, one hand coming up to stroke absently at his silvery beard. “Whenever Mr Huxley will have us, I should think,” he answers his daughter, inclining his head appreciatively in Hux’s direction.

“Late July? Early August?” Hux suggests, feeling reckless. It will be an expense, and one he knows they can ill afford; but he does not care. His father has been taking advantage of him, and Hux wants to strike back at him, somehow — and too he cannot shake the idea that in France things might be different, that he and Ben might…

“The first week of August, for Finn’s birthday?” Luke proposes. “Is that soon enough for you, Rey?” he adds, winking at her.

“Perfect,” Rey pronounces, her eyes shining. “And we’ll all go, yes? Aunt Leia? Ben?” she asks anxiously, turning to each of them: Finn nods enthusiastically; Ben looks rather startled, but does not object.

“Wonderful,” Hux says. “I’ll speak to my father,” he lies, “and all will be arranged. I’ll let the agent know that you’re interested, so no-one else snaps it up in the meantime.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Luke rises, and extends his good hand to Hux: they shake, and Hux finds himself returning Luke’s warm smile.

“I’ve never been to France,” Ben comments abruptly, having been silent all this time. “I’ll be glad of the chance to finally see it.”

Hux glances at him, and fights again to tamp down the images —  _delusions —_ of what summer in France, with Ben, might hold. “I’ll be happy to show you the country,” he replies, he hopes neutrally. “As I said, it’s a beautiful place, where we are. You’ll be hard-pressed not to fall in love with it.”

Ben’s Adam’s apple bobs tightly in his throat. He nods, nods again, looks away. “I hope so,” he mumbles, and falls silent again.

Hux speaks quickly to diffuse the brief tension _(imagined, you’re imagining things)_ that has descended between them, before the rest of the party picks up on it. “Might I have another cup of tea, Lady Organa-Solo?” he asks of Leia, and thanks her when it is poured.

The conversation turns, to the state of Millennium House’s roses (faring excellently in the sunshine, under the expert care of Luke’s gardener), and then to the suffrage rally taking place in town at the week-end, which Rey, Leia, and Luke are all eager to attend, and then peters companionably out. Hux has finished his second cup of tea; he knows his cue to leave, and rises accordingly, setting the porcelain cup back in its saucer.

“Well, I’m afraid I must be off,” he says. He inclines his head respectfully to Leia — “Thank you for your hospitality, Lady Organa-Solo” — and then turns to Ben: “And you, Ben, for the change of clothes. I’ll have them laundered and brought back as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” Ben says. Their eyes meet for a moment, and then he looks away.

The rain has stopped, outside, but the paths back to Huxley Hall are treacherously muddy, pitted and puddled. Hux has to pay special mind to Millie, for fear of her getting stuck; and he is thankful for this, for it keeps his thoughts from returning to how Ben had pinked and swallowed hard when Hux had said he’d fall in love.

_With France. Only with France._

At home, Hux eats supper alone, poring over the papers for the house in Amiens and writing a letter to the man who manages the property, letting him know to expect a visit in August and not to sell it before then. He’s surprised at how easily the plan has come together: he has never been a spontaneous man, valuing careful forethought in all aspects of his life. But the prospect — absurd, he knows — of Ben, and him, in France in high summer has proved irresistible to even his most rational nature.

As he addresses the envelope by the light of the oil-lamp on the table — to save money, they only light the electric chandelier when they have company — he becomes aware of a song running through the background of his thoughts. He pauses for a moment, his pen stilling, trying to bring to mind the words that accompany the melody; and when he realises what it is, Hux bites his lip and closes his eyes. _Telling._

The song is an old classical piece his mother had used to hum; when he asked her, over and over again, what she was singing, Marielle had taught her son the Italian words. It’s an aria by Scarlatti, ponderous and steeped in melancholy. The lyrics speak of _a certain sorrow, which goes on disturbing my peace;_ they end by revealing that _if it is not love, it will be soon._

Hux picks up his pen and returns to addressing the envelope, digging the nib in so hard that it nearly tears the thin paper. He finishes with the rest of the papers in an irritated hurry, knowing he’ll have made a mess of it and will have to redo things in the morning, but he is too distracted at present to care. All night, he tries — he goes to the gramophone and puts on the loudest, most invasive music he can find — but Scarlatti’s words will not leave his head.

_Se non è amore, amor sarà._

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finn, Rey, and Poe have been [charmingly illustrated](http://theearlgreyalpha.tumblr.com/post/167998993944/a-piece-commissioned-for-chapter-three-of-huxes) by [theearlgreyalpha](http://theearlgreyalpha.tumblr.com/)! Thanks again.
> 
> I'm a classically-trained singer and can't resist imposing my proclivities on Hux. [Sento nel core](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkNlDGfvjZg) is the first of two important _Lieder_ in his life, so stay tuned!
> 
> As usual, I'm on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com). (P.S: Let it be known that I hated Wuthering Heights.)


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

 

“Rey?”

That same night, at Millennium House, Ben knocks softly on the door to his cousin’s room, standing ajar. Warm light spills, friendly, from inside. He waits a moment, and then Rey comes to the door:

“Ben,” she greets him happily, surprised. “What is it? Come in.”

She’s dressed for bed, in a long white nightdress over which a flannel dressing-gown, worn-out and much too big for her, has been carelessly thrown: Ben almost wonders if it’s Luke’s, or even Finn’s. Her hair is draped over one shoulder, half-plaited — he’s interrupted her in the middle of it — and she beams at Ben as she ushers him inside, closing the door behind him.

“What brings you here so late?” she asks him, sitting back down at her vanity table and beginning to braid her hair again, none too neatly.

“I wanted to ask,” Ben begins hesitantly, feeling awkward standing, and so gingerly taking a seat on Rey’s canopied bed. Her dress from today is tossed atop the covers, and Ben glances at it as if it might attack him; he realises he has never been in a girl’s room before. He swallows. Rey continues with her hair, looking expectantly at him but saying nothing.

“About Poe,” Ben expels. Rey’s eyebrows arch. “And Finn,” Ben adds hastily. “How — how did you know?”

“Know what?” Rey asks, polite but cautious. She ties off the end of her braid and turns to face him on her stool, her hands placed on her knees.

“That you loved them,” Ben says quietly, taking a risk. His nerves threaten to choke him. _Relax._ “Did — could you tell at first sight? Like they say? Or — or did it take time? Were you ever…not sure?”

He stares at his lap, heart pounding. Rey is silent for a moment, and Ben dares not look up, certain he has got it wrong, that she will laugh at him. He regrets having come; his hands curl into fists and he digs his nails into his palms, deeply shamed. But then Rey speaks, and she is not angry, not cruel, but thoughtful.

“Well,” she muses, “I’ve known Finn since we were thirteen years old, you know, and — well, I don’t know if one knows one’s in love at that age. But there was certainly…something. I was drawn to him, and he to me, and we haven’t been parted since.”

“How did you meet?” Ben realises he doesn’t know, has never asked.

Rey looks pleased. “Well, it was perhaps a year after Luke took me in. I was only thirteen, like I said, and I’d been all but on my own since I was four. I’d grown so used to living on the streets that I couldn’t adjust to being in a proper home, with other children, and a roof over my head, a bed of my own, _servants,_ even — I didn’t know what to do with myself inside, when I didn’t have to worry about finding my next meal, about where I’d sleep that night. I felt cooped-up in my lessons, indoors, so I took to running away.

“I’d slip out after curfew — Luke didn’t believe in locking us in at night; a noble thing, to be sure, but the trouble he could’ve saved himself with me! — and I’d go right back to my old haunts. I couldn’t run with my old crowd anymore; they thought I talked _posh_ now, and even when I put on my boy's clothes and had dirt on my face, they wanted nothing to do with me.” She laughs again.

“One night I was out in the marketplace, and I noticed a scuffle going on, a big group of boys chasing one, alone. That was Finn. He’d stolen something, to sell it for food, and those boys had been sent to get it back. Well, I saw no harm in joining the chase; it was for a good cause, after all.” She winks.

“I was faster than the boys, and I caught up to him straightaway. I had a stick with me — I always carried one when I went out, and no-one ever bothered me! — and I used it to trip him. He fell, and I stood over him so he couldn’t get up.” Rey frowns, now. “I’d been caught stealing things myself before, of course, and I knew all too well that look of guilt and panic on his face. And he had…he had the loveliest eyes I’d ever seen.

“All of a sudden I didn’t care about the other boys and what they wanted from him. I wanted to help him. Instead of snatching the jacket, I asked if he was all right. He explained why he’d stolen it; he said he hadn’t eaten in days. I made up my mind right then.” She smiles. “I stuck out my hand and helped him up. I gave the jacket back to the gang of boys. I held my hand out to Finn, and he took it without a second thought.”

She pauses, here, and puts a finger to her chin. “If there was a moment — just one moment, like you asked — that would’ve been it. He didn’t even know me, but he went with me at once. I think I started loving him for that: after all he’d been through — and he had been through so much, _too_ much — he still trusted me, just like that.”

“So what happened then?” Ben asks her. Her words have filled him with a sadness, a longing that he cannot begin to describe, and yet he needs to hear more, hear it all. Perhaps the rest of the story will reveal some secret to him, some alchemy of the heart.

But Rey shrugs. “It was simple, after that. I brought him back to Luke’s, and they took a shine to each other right away; within two months he was living with us as Luke’s ward, and I stopped sneaking out at night.” She smiles, her eyes loving. “We just fit, Finn and me. We’re the same. We know each other like no-one else.”

“And Poe?” Ben asks, so envious of his cousin and how easy it is for her, to love and be loved in return by not one man but _two,_ and perhaps never to truly realise how lucky she is.

“The night we met, too,” Rey answers promptly. “You remember the ball, how we all three danced together? I knew it then, when I understood that he would never see Finn as a rival, but an equal. Another man might have been jealous, might have tried to drive him off; but Poe understands what Finn and I are to one another. He would never think to come between us — and he doesn’t need to. There’s room in my heart for them both.”

“I see,” Ben says softly. He cannot envision for himself the kind of pure and simple love that Rey has found with Finn and Poe, regardless of the singularity of their situation. For himself he sees only denial, silence, torment, with no hope of resolution. _How could there be?_

“Why do you ask?” Rey asks him gently. She has an inkling, but will not venture it.

“No reason,” Ben answers too quickly. “I was just — just curious. I see you with them, and your affection is so plain; you’re so happy, with them…” He trails off, and then stands abruptly, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Rey. It’s late — you're going to bed, I should go.”

He goes at once to the door, and then turns around, a hesitant, vulnerable look in his eyes. “Thank you,” he says. “For talking. For sharing that with me. I…I hope things go…however you’d like them to, with Poe,” he adds. “I think they will.”

Rey smiles, touched. She understands that Ben is leaving things — many, and perhaps heavy, things — unsaid; but he is obviously struggling, and she has no desire to push him any further. “Thank you, Ben. I hope so, too.” She rises from her dressing-table and comes over to press a goodnight kiss to his cheek. “If you’d ever like to talk again, do know you can come to me,” she tells him, squeezing his shoulder. “You can trust me. I promise.”

Although he has not revealed anything more, the relief on Ben’s face is apparent. “Thank you,” he almost whispers. “I’d like that. Yes.” He nods jerkily, once, and then turns again to go. “Goodnight, Rey.”

“Goodnight, Ben,” she calls softly after him. She watches him go down the hall to his own room, walking with those long stiff strides of his, as if he is still unaccustomed to his own lanky, gangling limbs: the bulk of his body, his being. When he has disappeared, she shuts her own bedroom door, and goes back to her vanity to finish getting ready for bed.

Hair plaited, cold-cream applied, Rey drapes Finn’s dressing-gown over the back of her chair, climbs into bed, and settles in with a book. She’s distracted, though, thinking with sympathy of Ben and whatever it is he can’t say; and, too, in the wake of the rest of their conversation, of Finn and of Poe.

She has been distracted often lately: at night, when she is alone and the house is asleep. She learned long ago how to please herself with nimble fingers, and her indulgences are all the sweeter now, for imagining those fingers theirs, Finn’s or Poe’s or sometimes, daring, both.

She did not grow up with a mother to teach her of the facts of life, so her knowledge comes largely from books — although the four months spent as a brothel’s scullery-maid when she was twelve also taught her plenty. The madam had been coarse but kind, and, with a laughing frankness, had answered Rey’s impertinent questions about “the pretty girls upstairs.” She learned from her that there are many reasons why a man and a woman (or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman) might make love, and that babies, often, are the least of them. She learned — and now firmly believes — that pleasure itself is as good a reason as any.

Rey opens her book and tries to start reading, but her eyes skim over the tight-packed text and she does not absorb a word. She sighs, and fidgets impatiently. The room is warm, Rey’s skin is warm, and she wants, now, to lie down, pull up her nightie and down her drawers and touch fingers to herself. But something holds her back. She wills the blossoming heat between her thighs to cool.

She succeeds in reading a few pages, and then picks up her paper-knife, slices carefully the next chapter, and reads a little more — and eventually she settles into the story, her body waiting patiently. The minutes pass, and then an hour, and then two. Rey’s eyes are beginning to grow heavy, the words starting to swim; her head bobs; and then, out of nowhere, comes a soft knock at the door.

Rey is fully awake at once. She frowns: the clock reads one-thirty. _Who in the world?_

At first she expects Ben, perhaps returning to ask her for more advice, emboldened by the hour. But then the warm heat left unattended in her mind, between her thighs, flares to life again, and with an uncanny knowledge whispers, _Him._

She is hurrying to the door as the visitor knocks again, and opening it to find Poe, her Poe, her midnight dreams made flesh. Something flares inside her.

“Poe,” Rey whispers, quickly ushering him inside as a bemused grin steals over her face. “What are you _doing_ here? How did you get in?”

Poe steps over the threshold and shuts the door behind him, taking her in his arms. “I wanted to see you,” he says, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. “I came in the servants’ entrance.” He winks. “I have sworn Cora and Archie to silence.”

Rey is dazzled, marvelling at his boldness, and at those simple words. _He wanted to see me. He wants me._ “I’m glad you’ve come,” she murmurs, nestling her head against his chest. It’s as if she was expecting him, as if she’d summoned him, how little she’s surprised. _He belongs here,_ she thinks, simply. And then she laughs, delighted, and kisses his mouth, and feels his strong arms come to wrap about her waist.

She leads him to her bed and they sit down, still kissing. Rey’s breathing quickens as Poe drops little kisses along her jawline and down the soft skin of her neck, to the unbuttoned collar of her nightgown. And then he stops there, and moves to kiss her again on the mouth — but Rey pulls away, and says, “Go ahead.”

Poe looks up, surprised, searching her face: “You’re certain?”

Rey nods. She has imagined this moment for weeks; she knows what she wants. She brings his hands to the buttons of her nightgown.

Slowly, reverently, Poe undoes them, his eyes — tender — fixed on hers all the while. Her chest rises and falls quickly as the lace-edged gown falls open down to her sternum, revealing pale skin beneath, not touched by the sun as her arms and face have been. When all the buttons have been undone, Poe pauses, waiting for permission to go further; and Rey grants it with a nod.

With Poe’s help she lifts the nightgown over her head. Underneath she wears only cotton knickers, leaving her breasts bare. She hears Poe’s breathing hitch as his eyes roam over her body; she can practically feel his gaze like a caress. She shivers. Poe looks up.

“Can I touch you, Rey?” he asks her softly.

“Yes,” she whispers. “Please.”

Poe leans in to kiss her again, his eyes closing, the long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks. He is so beautiful in the dim light, his dark curls falling in his eyes. She reaches up to brush them off his face, to run her fingers through them, and he hums against her mouth. She opens her lips for him, and they kiss, deeply, sweetly. Poe pulls back a moment, and begins to unbutton his own shirt until he is left only in his vest, and then makes to kiss her again; but again Rey stops him, and requests, feeling ever bolder, “That too.”

Poe’s eyes crinkle as he smiles at her. He pulls the vest over his head: his bare chest is finely muscled, the skin a rich olive, the nipples a darker brown. There is little hair on his chest, but curls as dark as those on his head taper in a trail down from his navel. Rey glances down, following it, drinking him in, and sees the hardness tenting his trousers.

Poe sees her looking, and must sense her hesitating, for he smiles, and cups her chin in his hand to look her in the eyes. “We’ll go slowly,” he promises. “Anything you’d like to do, and nothing at all that you wouldn’t.” He kisses her. “What do you want, sweetheart? Tell me.”

 _Everything,_ says a voice in Rey’s head, says the rhythm of her heart —  _everything, I want it all_. “Just — touch me,” she requests. “Please.”

Poe complies. He bends his head to kiss her again, tonguing gently at the seam of her lips, and she opens for him, and puts her tongue into the warm sweetness of his mouth. The scruff of his stubble rubs the soft skin of her face; she wonders if it will leave a mark; with a thrill she realises that she doesn’t care. Poe reaches up to cup her breasts, and she gasps against his lips at the feeling of it — his strong calloused fingers are soft on her skin, this most sensitive skin that has never been touched by another before. He runs his thumbs over her nipples, and she shivers, stifles a moan as they stiffen under his touch.

“Yes,” she murmurs, “like that, like that.”

Encouraged, Poe bends his lovely head from her mouth to her left breast, and places his lips there where his hand had been. He sucks, gently, running his tongue over the sensitive peak, and Rey gasps. Involuntarily her hands come up to make fists in his curls. She feels wetness precipitating between her legs; her head is beginning to swim with heightened and blissful sensations. Poe moves to the other breast, gives the nipple the same attention, and Rey buries her face in his hair and whispers his name.

When she thinks she will lose her head merely from his mouth on her breasts — the warm heat, the soft drag of his teeth on one and then the other — when she is about to beg him to stop, if only because it feels too good and she doesn’t know how much longer she’ll be able to stand it — then Poe seems to sense all of this, and ceases his ministrations there.

But his mouth is not gone long from her skin. He looks up, his pupils wide, his eyes so warm, and says, “Lie back;” and she does, pulling her braid out of the way as she lays her head on her pillow. Hesitant, she keeps her legs together at first, all at once fearing that her desire will be too visible — but Poe touches her knees lightly, and says, “Let me.” She parts her thighs and he kneels between them.

He lays his hands just below her ribcage, and trails his fingers down her belly, leaving a trail of goose-pimples behind; she shivers at the light, irresistible touch, and nearly begs, “More, Poe, please more,” surprising herself with the breathless need in her voice.

He smiles at her. “Anything,” he promises again. He rubs his thumbs in circles on her hips, just above the waistline of her knickers, and then looks up. “May I?”

Rey nods, rapid. She lifts her back off the bed as Poe slides her knickers off her hips and lays them aside.

“Tell me if you like this,” he says, looking her in the eyes again, “and tell me if you don’t. I only want to make you happy.” He kisses her navel, softly, teasing, and she laughs in surprise. “Are you ready?” he asks her.

“Yes,” she says, though she does not know what for; _but with him,_ she thinks, _anything._ “Yes, Poe. I trust you.”

“My darling girl,” he whispers, smiling; and then he bends his head between her legs.

She cannot quiet the gasp that escapes her lips when he brings his hands to open her, and touches his tongue to the soft wetness there. Her back arches, she throws her head back as Poe licks and kisses between her legs, his touch expert and gentle, like nothing she has felt before, only imagined. Her chest heaves with rapid, fluttering breaths as he continues, finding that most tender spot and applying teasing pressure to it, just as she learned years ago to do.

“Poe,” she gasps out, her hands fisting in the sheets. _“Yes,_ Poe, like that, _there —_ more, oh please, my love.”

He moves to lick at her opening, to stroke up and down the slit and dip his tongue inside. She feels herself wet with creamy slickness, feels his mouth coated in it, and shudders with overwhelming desire. “Touch me,” she begs. _“More.”_

Poe lifts his head and settles on his knees. She nearly cries out at the loss of his touch; but then he brushes his fingers down over her mound, the hair there — the lightest of grazes, a butterfly’s wings — and slides one finger inside her. A moan hums behind Rey’s lips, and then breaks free in a cry, as he crooks his knuckle and her whole body arches to meet him. She is half-delirious, her eyes fluttering between open and closed, her toes curling in the bedsheets as Poe slips a second digit inside. It goes in easily, and she writhes to feel herself opened further.

“Do you want it like this?” Poe asks her, stroking that tenderest spot between the folds with his thumb, even as his two fingers move slowly in and out of her body. “With my hands, or with my mouth?”

“Anything,” Rey gasps out, feeling her climax building, knowing that soon she will be pushed over the edge, no matter by what means. _“Oh,_ darling — please, Poe, I’m so close —”

He settles for both, and keeps his fingers inside her as he bends his mouth to her again. The gentle motion of his hand coupled with his agile tongue drive her almost immediately to orgasm: he has barely begun to lick again before she is gasping, arching, her body wracked with pleasure. She fists her hands in his hair for purchase, and he keeps his face between her legs as her climax courses through her and she moans his name.

Finally Rey’s head rests back on her pillow, her heart thudding, her chest heaving. Between her legs she is sodden, and when Poe lifts his head and kisses her sweetly, she tastes herself on his lips. “Thank you,” she whispers, finding her breath. “Oh, Poe — what now?” she asks him, dazed still, overwhelmed with him. “What do you want, my love? — surely I can give you —?” She knows not what, she has not the words, she knows only that she wants to thank him in any way she can.

“No, my darling,” Poe tells her. “We shouldn’t risk it; not yet.”

Rey understands; but still, she feels disappointed that she cannot repay him in some way. But his words —  _Not yet… Until when, then?_ she wonders, her heartbeat picking up again. _Is he implying…_

But now is not the time to dream of wedding-bells. She looks at him: “You’re certain?”

He kisses her. “It’s enough just to please you.”

They kiss for some moments more. Rey is warm all over, sated, buoyed; Poe holds her closely, she feels safe and loved. Outside the night is gentle, the crickets in the grass singing their summer songs. “I wish you could stay,” Rey breaks the kiss to whisper, as Poe nuzzles into her neck; but even as she says it, they hear a noise outside her door.

They still at once. The floorboards creak; down the hall, a door opens and closes. “Midnight stroll,” Poe whispers, and Rey gives a quiet laugh. They both know their night is over, now. Reluctantly they leave each other’s arms.

Poe dresses again, and kisses her at the door. “Come back tomorrow,” she implores him, holding tight to his lapels, and he says, “Patience, my girl. We must be careful.”

“I don’t want to,” Rey whispers, half-cross. Poe laughs, and kisses her.

“Goodnight, my love,” he says softly, as he opens the door and slips into the night.

“Dream of me,” she tells him.

“I will.” And he is gone.

Rey shuts the door behind him and leans up against it for a moment. Her body still hums and thrums with pleasure; she feels him coursing through her veins. She smiles, smiles, and then returns to bed. She falls asleep with the scent of him clinging to her hair, her clothes, her dreams.

 

* * *

 

Down the hall, in his own room, Finn touches himself beneath the covers. He has always slept lightly; he awoke when Poe came in. Hearing an intruder, frowning, he’d crept to his door and opened it a crack: enough to see Poe slip into Rey’s room, to hear her murmur of delight.

Finn had felt something searing inside him. _Accept it,_ he reminded himself. _You know how things will be._ But that did not stop the envy-sadness from burning a hole in his chest.

Once the door was closed behind Poe, and he was certain no-one would emerge, Finn snuck out of his own room, careful of the worn-out boards in the corridor. He had sat, carefully, outside Rey’s room, with his back to the wall, and he had listened; and while he listened, imagined.

On the other side of the wall, the two people he loves most made love to one another. He heard Rey’s quiet moans, sweeter than bells; he heard Poe’s low voice, his husky, soft laugh. His cock grew hard between his legs, and he did not touch it: did not allow himself to do anything but sit, and listen, and think; and agonise. How he wished to melt through the wall and join them there. How he wished even to watch, to see them lovely in the dim light. How he wanted, wanted them.

He heard her when she reached her pleasure. The pressure in his groin became unbearable, but he sat steadfast. He heard silence, after, and then their whispers, the sound of lips on lips. He shifted, preparing to return, alone, to his own room. The floorboards creaked. Inside Rey’s room all went still.

He slipped between his own sheets just as Poe slipped from her room. Finn heard him steal down the stairs — thought for a brief moment of calling out, calling him to him, but resisted the urge. So now he takes himself in hand, and calls up the sounds she’d made and the way he might have looked. Finn’s hand is warm, his cock is hard; his cheeks are wet with tears when finally he comes, whispering both their names.

 _Rey, Poe, Rey, Poe._ A litany, and they his saints, the only ones he worships.

He falls asleep alone.

 

* * *

 

The Skywalkers begin to plan for the trip to France. Baedekers are acquired and pored over at all hours; Hux has sent word that the agent has been informed of their intentions, and that the house will be ready for their arrival by the first week-end in August. Poe has been invited, and eagerly accepted; Rey is beside herself with anticipation, as is Finn, but more quietly.

(Poe has not yet made another nocturnal visit, for which Finn is secretly, selfishly grateful, though he hates to see Rey missing him. _In France,_ he tells himself. _In France I’ll open the door. In France we’ll be together for true.)_

Ben awaits the trip with a mixture of curiosity and fear. He will be pleased to have a change of scene — his routine of solitary sketching, reading, and traipsing through the woods has grown tiresome, of late — but he is nervous about being Hux’s guest. He imagines, though he knows it’s unlikely, being made to share a room with him, and waking from one of his persistent and infernal dreams. What if he sleepwalks, or cries something secret while he slumbers? What if — his face flushes hot at the very thought — he does something, while unaware: tries to touch him, or begs him to? This fear, illogical though it might be, is so strong, so paralysing, that he nearly, several times, tells his mother he wishes to stay home after all, if only to avoid the risk…

But every time, he doesn’t. Every time, something stops him.

Hux, on his own estate, is anticipating the trip as well. The storm that ensued when he calmly told his father the plan has now blown over; he reminded Brendon coolly that he himself now handles their finances, and that he himself will find a way to accommodate the extra expense. He suggested that spending less on gambling and whiskey would provide them with some leeway, and ducked neatly to avoid the tumbler that then shattered on the wall where his head had been.

“Five pounds, that,” Hux commented, “French crystal,” and lightly sidestepped the shards to leave the room, his father’s bellow following him. The matter was no more discussed after that; Hux had won.

He has been hard at work this morning, June sixteenth, sorting through bills and receipts and bank papers, allocating funds here and there to slowly chip away their debts while also paying their dues to the manager and staff in France. The Cotswolds property has sold this week, a stroke of luck, so they have some extra income; but all the same, by noon Hux’s head is spinning with figures, too many of them red-inked for his liking. He stands up, stretches, gives a heavy sigh, and decides that what he needs to refresh himself is a ride.

Millie is angry with him for being away so long; he can tell when he reaches her stall and makes to stroke her, murmuring, “Hello, my girl.” She shies away from him and gives a peeved snort, tossing her mane. Hux laughs, and digs a sugar-cube from his pocket, coaxing her: “Don’t be angry, sweetheart. I’m back now, aren’t I? Let’s go.”

He saddles her and leaves the stables, feeling better already. He sometimes wishes he were a cavalryman; he belongs on the back of a horse, he feels, whence he can see the world and tower above it, king of his own domain. Millie’s hooves stir up dust and Hux squints in the sun.

“Where to?” he asks her, not having thought of a destination yet, only that he wanted to be outside and moving. He decides to set off down a trail and see where it takes him. “Come along, my girl.”

He has foregone his riding-jacket today, fearing the heat, and is now glad of his decision. The sun beats down from its midpoint in the sky, and already his bare head is growing warm. He takes the reins in one hand to push his shirt-sleeves to his elbows and then nudges Millicent faster with a gentle click of his tongue. She picks up speed, happy to canter, the wind toying with her mane. They haven’t been out for a morning ride in ages, and Hux is sorry for it. He resolves to make up for it going forward.

Ahead of him, the paths diverge. He can either go around the perimeter of the property, past the abandoned greenhouse and overgrown topiary garden (hidden from view, and never seen by their few and rare visitors); or he can go down through the wood, to the path connecting to the Skywalkers’ estate.

He chooses the latter.

He doesn’t stop to think why. Something tells him, though, that he _should_ go; and he does. He turns Millicent towards the wood, heading gratefully into the shade. Too soon they leave it, and follow the path up the rise and down again, and now here is the hedge bordering the other estate.

 _Too late to turn back now,_ Hux thinks, strangely contented with his decision. And in the same way he’d known, this morning, that a ride would do him good, he now has the feeling that he should like some company; and he knows just whose it should be.

He’ll pay Ben a visit.

 _Don’t,_ says a voice in his head. _You’ll only regret it; it’ll make things worse. The only way to stop…this, whatever it is, is to avoid him, and you know it._

The voice is absolutely correct. Every time he sees Ben, Hux walks away from the encounter distracted and _raw,_ feeling as if all his nerves have been exposed and Ben has dragged a finger across them. He finds himself thinking impossible things, embarking upon absurd and perverted flights of fancy, and ending up, above all else, angry: with Ben, for being the object of these follies, and with himself, for allowing them to happen at all.

He denies, now, how many nights he has indulged in that most vulgar vice, one hand down his pyjamas and his teeth sunk into his bottom lip. In the morning he convinces himself nothing happened, that he hadn’t seen dark hair behind his eyes.

And so, he reasoned, the only way to stop feeling this way, to stop thinking these things, would be to cut off contact with him entirely; and for a while, it had worked. But then had come the rainstorm (dry clothes in Ben’s bedroom, the expanse of his bare back), and now the prospect of France, and he can keep himself pure no longer.

He no longer wants to. He rides down the path, dismounts and hitches Millie, and then walks to their front door and rings the bell.

“Hello,” Hux says to a startled-looking Finn, when he opens it and finds him there. “Is Benjamin in?”

Finn blinks. He’s rather disappointed: when the bell rang, he had expected Poe, and had raced to the door before Cecil could get it. He is surprised to see Huxley, and to find him in search of Ben; if anything, Finn would have thought the earl’s son would be deigning to call on them in order to see Luke, with some question about the trip. But:

“Yes,” he answers politely. “Shall I call him?”

“Please.”

“Come in while you wait.” Finn smiles, and goes to find Ben.

Hux, despite his invitation, lingers on the doorstep, suddenly feeling foolish for having come at all. He has kept his riding-crop in his hand, hardly noticing that he still held it; he turns it around, now, between his bare hands, toying nervously with a loose bit of leather on the handle. He hopes Ben will be busy. He hopes Ben will refuse him his company. He hopes Ben will look at him, see instantly what it _really_ is that he wants, and then spit in his face and never speak to him again. Although he has done nothing —  _yet —_ he feels he would deserve it.

There is movement at the top of the stairs. Ben looks down into the foyer, registers Hux’s presence, and proceeds downstairs with visible caution. “Hello,” he says, one hand on the railing.

“Good afternoon.” Hux’s hand stills on the crop. Ben descends the last step but comes no closer to him. Hux clears his throat. “I wondered if you might care to accompany me on a ride.”

A series of expressions cross Ben’s face within seconds. “Why?” he blurts.

“I — enjoyed riding with you, the other day,” Hux says, aware that his tone has grown frosty. “I thought you might perhaps want to go out again, for longer, this time; but if you don’t —”

“No,” Ben cuts him off.

Hux’s face falls minutely. “Very well, then.”

“No!” Ben says again, feeling an utter fool. “No — I meant — I meant I should like to.” He glances around him, his hands confused. “Let me — I should change. The horses — I could take Luke’s Bluebell, I think...” He nods, rapidly. “Let me change,” he repeats. “Wait here.”

Hux inclines his head. “I will.” He watches Ben hurry up the stairs, his heavy steps _thump-thump_ ing, and he feels a curious lightness.

Ben returns several minutes later, his hair pulled hastily back into a queue, an ill-fitting pair of jodhpurs on. “These are Luke’s,” he explains, wincing as he bends down to pull on his boots. “Mine got left in New York, somehow.”

“The horses won’t mind,” Hux replies, “and I don’t, either.”

Ben looks up, abruptly, his hand stilling on his laces; and then quickly looks back down again. He finishes the knot and stands. “Shall we?”

They go out to the stable to fetch Luke’s horse for Ben. He tacks her up and leads her out to where Millie is hitched, and he and Hux each mount.

“Which way?” he asks, once they are both seated, reins in hand.

“Up to you,” Hux says cordially.

Ben is gripped with a mild panic. “Follow me,” he says, and sets off too fast, with no idea where he’s headed. _I’ll think of something._

Hux spurs his horse on and follows. He realises that he should have had a destination in mind, being as how he’d invited Ben out, but it’s too late for that now. They pick up speed and move into a trot, riding almost side-by-side; Hux lets Ben go slightly ahead of him, and follows him down a path leading away from the house, toward a wide expanse of meadow bordering the Skywalkers’ land on the opposite side from the Huxleys’. Hux has lived here his whole life and has never bothered to explore it.

The sun is warm, the air insular and heavy; the sky is white-blue with clouds. As they ride on, Ben begins to sweat, his dark hair growing hot. They haven’t talked at all since leaving the house: Ben tries to think of something to say, but everything he comes up with feels pointless and juvenile. His heart is skipping strangely. He wonders if this has been a very bad idea.

Hux presses forward slightly, to catch up with Ben: he, too, has begun to feel the silence. Ben looks over at him and offers a nervous smile.

“Beautiful day,” Hux comments. They are halfway down the trail now, fast approaching the meadow, its tall green grass swaying gently in the light breeze. “I do hope this weather lasts.”

“Yes.” Ben jumps on this offering, meagre as it is. “D’you think it’ll be as nice as this in France?”

Hux glances at him. He hadn’t truly thought that Ben was looking forward to the trip — had persisted in believing, despite his expression of apparent interest when it first was suggested, that he had only agreed to it to be polite — and is now oddly soothed to hear him bring it up. He nods. “It should be. We usually went a little earlier when I was growing up, but as far as I know, it only gets hotter as the summer goes on.”

“I hope it won’t be too hot. New York in high summer is unbearable. We always went to the Hamptons, or Nantucket. I’ve never liked the beach, but at least it wasn’t stifling like the city.”

Hux can hardly remember Ben ever saying so many words in a row. (He himself also looks surprised, and presses his lips together as if to clamp in any more that may spill out.) Hux smiles.

 “I don’t like the beach, either. We went to Cornwall once when I was very young, and I got so badly sunburnt that we never went back.” As he says this, he takes the reins in one hand to scratch the back of his neck, hoping it’s not burning already. “Summers in France are much nicer.”

“What d’you think we’ll do, while we’re there? Is there much to see in the town?”

Ben seems genuinely interested, and hearing him say _we_ about them, about Hux and him, is dangerously pleasant. Hux fights to keep his voice natural as he replies, “Yes, plenty. There are vineyards surrounding the property, and they make for lovely walks; and then in Amiens proper there is a beautiful museum, and of course the cathedral. And there are stables nearby, where one can rent a horse for trail-rides, or else a coach-and-four — my mother always liked to take me on long drives. We shan’t be bored.”

“Your mother,” Ben repeats. “It was her house, you said?”

“Her wedding present from my father, yes. She loved it there. She talked of our moving there permanently, at some point; but that never came to pass.”

In fact, Marielle had often spoken of escaping to Amiens — secretly, and with her son in tow — in the later years: before she grew ill, but after Brendon’s drinking and gaming had begun to get out of hand. And when he drank, sometimes, he grew violent: shouting at her for some imagined slight, breaking crockery and glasses, and — on some awful occasions, seared indelibly into Hux’s memory — hitting her hard enough to leave bruises.

On one of those nights, after his father, overwhelmed with shame, had retreated into his study with another bottle, Hux had come down from his hiding-place at the top of the stairs (he had overheard it all, paralysed with fright by the shouting), and found his mother curled up on the dining-room floor in tears. She’d lifted her face and found him there, and murmured in distress — “Darling, I thought you were in bed…”

He’d slid down to sit on the floor beside her, and she had opened her arms and pulled him close, sighing heavily into his hair. “One day, we’ll leave him, _chéri,”_ she’d promised. “I hardly know him anymore. We’ll go; we’ll go to France, my love, you and I. We’ll be together, and all will be well.”

“Why didn’t it?” Ben asks, jolting Hux back to the present. He looks at him in confusion. “Why didn’t you move to France?” Ben prompts.

“Oh — well. My mother…she fell ill.” Hux clears his throat: he had thought Ben knew of this.

Apparently, he did. Ben flushes, suddenly, and stammers, “Oh — of course. I’m so sorry; how foolish of me —”

“It’s all right,” Hux cuts him off. “You forgot. It’s no harm done.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben says again.

Hux nods. Silence falls, again, and it is heavier now for having been lifted, however briefly. But after a few moments, they reach the meadow, and slow; Ben dismounts gladly, and ties Bluebell to the dilapidated fence bordering the field. Hux follows suit.

“Shall we…sit down?” Ben asks awkwardly, gesturing to a spot in the shade of an oak tree. “It might be cooler over there.” Despite the clouds, the day has indeed grown markedly hotter, and he is starting to feel uncomfortable; he imagines Hux, with his fair skin, will be loath to spend too much more time in the sun.

“Certainly.” Hux inclines his head and lets Ben lead the way. Without hesitation, Ben drops to the ground, leans against the tree-trunk, and closes his eyes, unperturbed by the dirt and grass beneath him. Hux wishes he had his jacket after all, to spread out on the grass so his fawn-coloured jodhpurs won’t be ruined, but steels himself and gingerly takes a seat. The air is much cooler here, and he’s glad of it. He had been beginning to feel warm, too warm, all over, and is now convinced —  _quite_ convinced — that it was only the fault of the sun.

“What was she like?” Ben asks, after a moment, opening his eyes again. “Your mother.”

“Kind,” Hux replies, leaning back on his arms. “And beautiful. She could sing like an angel, in Italian, German, Russian, French. She had thought to pursue it as a career, until she met my father.” Brendon Huxley had quickly quashed that dream, implying heavily that a man of his station could not take a performer to wife. Hux still harbours a bitter regret for that, for his mother’s sake. “Some of my fondest memories are of her lullabies.”

“She sounds lovely,” Ben says. He caught the note of displeasure in Hux’s voice when he mentioned his father, and he understands. “I know how she must have felt,” he adds hesitantly.

Hux looks over: “How do you mean?”

“All I’ve ever wanted to do is be an artist,” Ben confesses. “I…I’m not much good at anything else. But my father didn’t approve, and my mother went along with him. She still does, even now he’s gone.”

“Why didn’t he approve?”

Ben shrugs, glancing over at Hux, who is shielding his eyes from the sun and squinting to look at him. “He was a military man. He wanted me to join the army when I finished school. I persuaded him to let me take a year before I did…and, well, within that year…” He swallows. “We’re here now.”

“But your mother must have relented,” Hux says. “You have a place at Oxford.”

“That was my uncle’s doing.” Ben looks uncomfortable. “When it was decided that we would move here, since the army was no longer an option, he suggested that I should start at university, to keep me busy. I was always good at English, and if I can’t study art, it may as well be literature…but I don’t think it should have been at Oxford. I don’t think I merit a place there.”

“Didn’t you sit the examinations?”

“No.” Ben bites his lip, looking guiltier still. “Luke made the arrangements. I don’t think I would have passed.”

“I’m sure you would have,” Hux consoles him, tentative. “I took them myself before starting at Sandhurst. I did quite terribly in Latin, but scraped by in all the rest.” He had, in fact, passed everything but Latin with flying colours, but doesn’t want to boast.

“Latin,” Ben says, shaking his head. “I’m worried about that. I’m expected to take it there, but I never have before. It was optional at my school; I took painting instead.”

“A wise choice,” Hux says fervently. Ben looks up, surprised. “It’s a dreadful language. I despised taking it at Charterhouse; you’re lucky you’ve gotten by without it so far.” He doesn’t know what he’s saying next until he says it. “My abilities really are modest — but if you wanted, though, I could…help you with it. Enough to build a foundation before you start in the autumn.”

Ben looks rather shocked. “I wouldn’t want to impose,” he says hurriedly, shaking his head. “Especially if you hate it that much. And it would take up your time — you don’t need to — oh, no, don’t,” he stammers out. “I’ll manage on my own. Thank you.”

 _I’ve crossed a line._ What Hux hears is a polite but decisive rebuttal of his own, presumptuous offer to spend more time together —  _and a deserved one, at that._ Why, indeed, should he have been so idiotic as to think that Ben would _want_ to be tutored by him — do anything with him, at that? He has practically forced him out on this ride, today, and now here he is trying to insinuate himself further into Ben’s life, and at a time when he is still unsettled and grieving. _Your selfish heart. Your perversions. For shame._

“Of course,” Hux replies, flustered. “I didn’t mean to — of course you’ll manage. I’m sorry. Forget I offered at all.” He resists the urge to dig his nails into his palms. Suddenly, he cannot stand to be out here, with Ben, any longer, when it has become so clear that it is against Ben’s will. He stands, abruptly. “Shall we get back?” he blurts. “I don’t want to keep you.”

Ben feels himself shrinking, inwardly. _You should have accepted!_ The thought of spending time — alone, and regularly — with Hux had distracted him so much that he’d panicked and declined outright: precisely the opposite of his intentions, now he’s stopped to think. But it’s too late now; Hux, clearly offended, has quite understandably rescinded the gesture. _You’ve insulted him. No wonder he wants to go back._

Tea-time is not for some hours yet, and Ben does not relish the thought of going home and sitting alone in his room until then, but all the same he replies, “Yes, perhaps. I imagine I’ll be expected back for tea soon.” His voice rings false and cold.

He stands also, his back scraping against the tree’s bark as he does, no doubt dirtying his shirt. _Another thing you’ve done wrong today._ He goes quickly to unhitch Bluebell and mount her; Hux follows him, and does the same with Millicent. They don’t speak as they do.

The ride back is painfully long. To the east, the sky has begun to darken, and the air grows heavier still. If they pick up their pace, they can do so while letting the polite assumption stand that it is in order to outrun the coming rain, and not to hurry from one another’s company. But finally, Huxley Hall comes into view, and the paths diverge in front of them. By this time both are miserable, the silence between them oppressive.

Hux breaks it. “Thank you for the ride,” he says diplomatically. He does not suggest doing it again.

“Thank you,” Ben replies, equally reserved. He understands that of course Hux will not want to repeat this afternoon’s outing — even if, for a while, it had been quite pleasant… _until you made an utter fool of yourself._ “I was glad to get out of the house.”

 _But not to be with you._ Hux understands. He turns Millie toward home. “Have a pleasant evening.”

In the distance, thunder rumbles. “You as well,” Ben says. And then he turns Bluebell down the other path and digs his heels in, unwilling to force his company on Hux any longer.

What Ben doesn’t see is Hux staying, and watching him ride away until he is out of sight, even as the first drops of rain begin to fall, sticking his shirt to his skin. Hux curses himself silently, and then rides home, cold and ashamed.

 

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter there is a single mention of a period-appropriate racial term which would now be considered something of a slur. There are also guns, but nothing is killed with them.

* * *

 

Ben waits a few days, until he can no longer stand it. He feels an inexplicable but overwhelming need to clear the air with Hux, to apologise for offending him and express, somehow, that he hopes they can be friends — but he does not know how to do this, for fear of making things worse.

 _Friends,_ scoffs a voice in his head. _That’s not the half of it. You’re lying to yourself, and to him. You’re unnatural, and dishonest, besides. He’d be better off not to know you._

All the same, despite this clamour —  _I know, I know, I know —_ he musters the strength to return to Huxley Hall.

He waits until all the family have left for the day, Rey and Finn to the Damerons’ for luncheon, Luke and Leia for a walk into town — he feels silly but doesn’t want them to know where he’s going. His mother, he knows — despite how polite she’d been when Hux had stayed for tea after the storm — still isn’t sure what to make of him, and Ben, somehow, fears her disapproval of his wanting to befriend him. _If only she knew the rest._

So he sets out past noon, knowing that he’ll have the afternoon to himself, out and back before anyone can notice he’s gone and ask questions. He thinks to take his bicycle — ancient, rusting, discovered in the recesses of the stable; he’d checked with Luke, who said it had belonged to a past tenant of theirs who’d never come back for it, and that Ben was welcome to it if he’d like it — but then decides to walk, instead. The longer it takes him to get there, he reasons, the more chance he’ll have to turn back if (when) he realises how foolish he’s being.

It’s nearly twenty minutes before Ben reaches the edge of their estate from the house. The walk is a pleasant one, over the vast expanse of their acres, and now through the wood where he met Hux the other day, caught in the rain; Ben recognises the grove of trees he’d been sketching when the storm hit, and even sees, with a nervous flutter of his stomach, the clearing where their paths had crossed. He walks past it quickly, swallowing his doubts.

 _He won’t want to see you. You offended him last time; he could hardly stand to be with you any longer. You haven’t even been invited — you can’t just barge into his home,_ that sneering voice badgers him. But Ben, chin high as he crosses the boundary between their properties, refutes it:

_He told me I could use the library whenever I liked. I’ll say I’ve come for that. And then I’ll ask him if he can’t show me the way, and as we walk there I’ll apologise. I’ll ask if he can start tutoring me right away. I’ll tell him I’d be glad of his help — that I’d like it, in fact._

He tries not to think about what will happen if Hux is busy, or not home, or if he shuts the door in Ben’s face when he sees who’s rung the bell. _He’s not so cruel as that. It’ll be fine._

He is crossing the front lawn, now: a wide sweep of green velvet, split down the middle by the gravel driveway. Ben might be mistaken, but compared to the night of the ball and his subsequent visit, the grass is beginning to look unkempt. In daylight as at night, Huxley Hall is beautiful, but sad, somehow: touched by tragedy, inhabited by ghosts. The trees that nestle next to the house are in full leaf, dark green, drooping like weary phantoms; ivy spreads like spilt ink over the grey façade of the house, over the stones and into the cracks in-between. It looks like nature is trying, prematurely, to re-stake her claim.

Ben follows the driveway up to the front door. He wipes his hands on his trousers and pushes his hair out of his face, and then reaches for the doorbell — just as the door is pulled open from the other side.

He starts, jumping back — “Oh!” — and is met with an exclamation of equal shock from Hux himself, standing on the threshold with a pile of black fabric in his arms. “I’m so sorry,” Ben apologises immediately. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Well, you did,” Hux says, pressing one hand to the door-jamb to steady himself. “Good Lord.” His heart rate had spiked at the shock, and now that _Ben,_ of all people, is here, it won’t calm down again. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d drop by,” Ben says, attempting casualness and missing. He comes right out with it: “To…apologise. For the other day.”

Hux conceals a look of surprise. “You didn’t do anything.” _It was all me._

“I was rude,” Ben protests. “About tutoring. I should have said yes. I wanted to, you see, but you took me by surprise, and I —” He falters, and breaks off. “Where are _you_ going? I’m sorry, I’ve disturbed you.”

Hux shakes his head. “You’ll never believe this, but I was just leaving to come see you.”

Ben’s eyebrows shoot up. _“Me?_ But why?”

Hux holds up the bundle in his arms. “I have your clothes. They’ve been washed and pressed for you.”

He passes the shirt and trousers to Ben, who takes them as if in a trance. He remembers how Hux had looked wearing them — how he’d felt to see him — and his stomach turns flip-flops. “Thank you,” he blurts. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to. I had to repay your kindness somehow.”

Upon returning home after their disastrous ride the other day, Hux had gone up to his bedroom in a black, bitter mood — and had spotted the clothes lying over a chair, where he’d left them. Even in the wake of his humiliation, his hopes had flared obstinately to life. He’d washed and pressed them himself, and had spent the intervening days working up the nerve to go drop them at Ben’s (half-praying he wouldn’t be home when he did). Today, finally, he had — and now here Ben is.

“Well, thank you,” Ben says, looking slightly stunned.

“Ah — why have you come?” Hux asks, trying not to sound rude. “Only to — apologise?”

“Yes, but — not only — I also thought, perhaps,” Ben stammers out, “perhaps you might like to take a walk with me? Or we could ride — I only thought maybe — it’s a lovely day, and I didn’t want to be shut up inside…”

Hux’s heart turns a somersault, quite against his will. _I haven’t driven him off._ He smiles, hesitant. “I’d like that,” he replies. “A walk, you said? I’ll get my hat.”

His neck had burned, last time, and he won’t make the same mistake again. He finds his straw boater on the hat-rack and adjusts it, quickly, in the mirror, hoping he doesn’t look a dandy or a fool; and then re-joins Ben on the threshold. “Where to?”

“Back to my house? So I can drop these off?” Ben suggests, lifting the clothes in his arms. He wonders, daring, if after they drop them off Hux might be persuaded to stay awhile.

“Certainly.” Hux inclines his head. “Shall we?”

They set off down the drive. Hux notes with displeasure that the grass is growing wild again, so quickly, almost as if they’d never had it mown. They’ll need to have someone in again, but the budget won’t allow for even a trim, at least not for some time. _When we’re back from France, maybe. And someone should look at the trees, at least out front here; they need pruning again…_

Hux is quiet as they walk down to the gate, craning to look around him, and Ben is growing worried. _Have I bored him already? Say something, speak up._

“How are you, this morning?” he begins, rather unimaginatively.

Hux looks round. “Quite well, thank you,” he replies, startled to have been asked. He realises he’s being rude, paying more attention to the state of the shrubbery than to Ben, his guest, even if unexpected. “And yourself?”

“I…I’m well. Also. Thank you.” Truth be told Ben has not felt _well,_ not entirely, since that afternoon in February and the awful night that followed some weeks later; but he will not confess this to Hux. _You’ll scare him off again._ “Did you…were you serious?” he asks instead, changing tack. “About tutoring me?”

“Oh — well. Yes, I suppose I was. If you’d like the help. I did warn you, though, that my skills were never exceptional, and have since almost definitely rusted.”

They have passed through the gate, now, and Hux closes and bolts it behind them, noting that it, like his Latin, could use some oiling. He sighs inwardly, adding one more task to the estate’s never-ending to-do list.

“I don’t mind,” Ben assures him, too quickly. “I’m starting from scratch, I’ll need all the help I can get — especially if Latin is as dreadful as you say,” he adds, risking a smile.

“It’s worse.” Hux smiles back, feeling himself, unbelievably, start to relax. Ben wanted to see him again. He wants his help; he wants his time. He checks himself, quickly: _My friendship. And that’s all._

“We could start today,” Ben suggests. Almost immediately, he corrects himself, hurrying to add, “If you’re not busy, of course. If it wouldn’t be an imposition.”

Hux thinks of the rusting gate, and the over-growing trees and grass, and the stable that needs sweeping and the dying chandelier and the inch of dust that lies over everything in every room they haven’t used since the staff were all dismissed after his mother died. He thinks of the provisions they will need for supper tonight, and what a foul mood his father had been in this morning.

He thinks how glad he will be to be away from it all, and with Ben, even if just for a few hours.

He smiles at Ben. “I’d be happy to.”

The family are all still out when they reach Millennium House. Ben is relieved, and embarrassed to be relieved — there is nothing improper about his having Hux over, there is nothing for him to hide…and yet his heart pounds, as they slip off their shoes and Hux hangs his hat on the newel-post and Ben says, “I’ll drop these in my room, and my books are up there, too,” and Hux says, “I’ll come with you,” and follows him up the stairs.

Hux has been in Ben’s bedroom before, and Ben has not forgotten it, _cannot_ forget it; and still how guilty he feels! for they are alone in the house, and if he had his way and the world was not against him, it would not be his Latin books (as yet unopened) that he reached for, but Hux’s hand as the door closed behind him.

“These are what I have,” Ben says, timid. He holds up Allen and Greenough’s grammar and Lewis’ dictionary and his composition book, all brand-new. “I haven’t started anything yet. I didn’t know where to begin.”

“That’s all right.” Hux gestures to the escritoire. “Shall we sit?”

Ben pulls the armchair over from the corner and insists that Hux have it, taking a seat himself on the uncomfortable desk-chair. He opens his composition book, cracking the spine to lay it flat, and dips his pen in the inkwell, wiping it clean with childlike care. He looks up at Hux: “What first?”

There is something terribly sweet and trusting about him, something Hux would never have guessed him to possess when they first met. The veil of anxiety and melancholy that has hung about Ben for as long as he has known him — a lingering, tragic air, the roots of which, Hux suspects, go deeper than he knows — has seemed to lift, even if only briefly. Hux knows, of course, that it is not his presence that has wrought this change, but he is glad of it, for Ben’s sake, all the same.

He opens the grammar, unsure where to begin; he has never tutored or been tutored before; he had gone through all his studies quite distinctly alone. This thought had never occurred to him, but now makes him — almost, almost — strangely sad.

Hux clears his throat. He finds the first conjugation in the grammar, and makes himself focus; he points at _iuvare,_ to aid, thinking it rather appropriate. “We’ll start with verbs. Each verb has a stem, you see, and then an ending to tack onto it, according to gender, number, and case…”

Ben looks confused already. “I’m sorry?” he ventures.

Hux stops. “Do you have any German?”

Ben shakes his head.

“French?”

“No.”

“I don’t suppose Spanish?”

A shake of the head, again, looking abashed. “I’m sorry.”

“My fault,” Hux interjects quickly. “I’m sorry, I assumed too much. Ah — here. Let me —”

And he takes the pen and book from Ben, and begins to write out Latin words, in neat rows. He writes, Ben notices, with his right hand, although elsewhere he has seen him favour his left; he wonders why, but does not ask. His script is precise and elegant: _public school,_ Ben thinks, and almost smiles.

Hux turns to him again, the page now filled with writing, not a single blot to mar it. “All right. This should be simpler; let me show you what I mean, about the cases and endings and stems —”

But he hasn’t time to show him, for suddenly there comes a knock at the door: “Ben?”

Ben starts, as does Hux, and they both spring back: Hux had not realised how closely their heads had been bent together over the page. Ben stands, quickly, and calls, “Yes?”

The door opens, and Leia pokes her head in. “Your uncle and I are back, and Rey and Finn should be shortly — oh! Good afternoon, Mr Huxley,” she says, her tone growing slightly reserved, when she sees him. “What brings you here today?” Her eyes flick over the escritoire, to the open grammar and the book, and her eyebrows rise.

Ben flushes, as if caught-out in some indecent act. “He’s going to tutor me, Mama,” he answers her before Hux can reply. He feels a need to defend himself, and Hux, although they have done nothing wrong. “In Latin. For Oxford. We’ve just started.”

(He sounds, Hux notes with a pitiful thrill, almost _pleased._ His heart flips, again, and he tries to ignore it.)

Leia’s eyebrows rise higher. “Latin,” she repeats. “I see.” She looks unsure as to what to do with this prospect — and so settles on accepting it. “Well — enjoy yourselves, then. Tea will be in three hours or so, and you’re welcome to stay, Mr Huxley.” Her voice is kinder now. She shakes her head, and says again, “Latin,” before she disappears. Hux hears her heels clicking softly down the corridor.

“Well!” he says, once he is sure she has gone: he doesn’t know why he waits. “Shall we carry on?”

Ben sits back down at his desk, and examines what Hux has written. He doesn’t understand any of it —  _but he’ll tell me. He’ll teach me._

Suddenly, as if revealed to him by clouds parting, he sees the summer spreading out ahead of him, of _them:_ a month at least of Latin lessons, and trail rides, and walks through their estates — and then France, in August, and then still more summer after that…and with Hux, all of it.

The guilt will come later, Ben knows, and the thoughts he isn’t supposed to have; the dreams, too, that still will not leave him. But for now, the thought is so hopeful, so unlike the dreariness and melancholy he had counted on for the rest of the summer — the lonesome waiting-game leading to Oxford — that he cannot but feel his spirits lifting. _I won’t be alone any longer._

Ben looks at Hux. He smiles. “Yes,” he says. “Let’s begin.”

 

* * *

 

They don’t go down for tea. By that time they are deep into the second conjugation: Ben has taken quite naturally to Latin, with an ease Hux envies fiercely, or would have in his Charterhouse days.

“You have quite surpassed me,” Hux tells him, when Ben finishes a page of verbs in the future perfect with impressive speed, setting down his pen and looking eagerly up at Hux. “I daresay you won’t have need of lessons, after a week or so of this.”

Ben’s face, ever expressive, now falls, a little. “Oh,” he says. “But I would still like your help. What if it gets harder?”

“I’m certain you’ll manage.”

Hux picks up the grammar and leafs through it, searching for something to do next, and then realises that Ben has fallen silent. He looks up: Ben is fidgeting with the pen, his eyes downcast. He seems on the point of saying something, but doesn’t speak, and Hux realises too late how his words must have sounded. What he’d meant as a gentle jest — praise, even — must have come across as a dismissal, and a flippant one at that. He winces. _There you are again with your foot in your mouth._

“But I’ll still be glad to help,” he blurts.

Ben looks up. “You will?”

“For as long as you need. As long as you’d like,” Hux corrects himself, and closes the grammar. “We do want you in fighting shape for Oxford.” He stands, now, though, and takes his watch from his pocket; and his sigh is genuine, when he sees the time. The afternoon has slipped through his fingers without his noticing, and his father will be cross if he is too late coming home; not for worry, or sentiment, but because their cook is indisposed this week and so Hux has taken on that role, along with those of groundskeeper, accountant, and handy-man, at home. “But I’m afraid we had best stop here for today.”

“Will you come again tomorrow?”

“I —” In his surprise Hux fumbles for words. _Yes, yes, yes, if you want me._ “Of course. I have some business to attend to in the morning, but in the afternoon I should be free.” A thought forms, and with a deep breath he voices it, as nonchalantly as he can: “If you’d like, perhaps — we could lunch in town together, and have our lesson after? One shouldn’t attempt the third and fourth conjugations on an empty stomach.”

“I would like that,” Ben answers at once. “I’d like that very much. Yes.”

“Excellent.” Hux hopes that the Latin has not addled Ben’s brain, that he does mean what he says, that the excitement in his eyes is genuine and not brought on by mental exhaustion. “I’ll drop by around one, then?”

“One tomorrow.” Ben nods. “I’ll walk you out.”

Downstairs, Hux collects his boater from the newel-post, puts it on, and tips it neatly back, his hands careful on the brim. Ben watches him, and feels his heart aching.

“Good evening,” Hux bids him, one hand on the door-knob. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Thank you for your help. And the clothes.”

“Til tomorrow afternoon.”

“Tomorrow.”

Hux slips out the door. The sky is pinkening, outside: the colour of summer, of hope.

 

* * *

 

And the next afternoon is just as they have planned. Hux rings the bell at one precisely, and Ben is ready, waiting for him, sitting on the bottom stair inside and jumping up to greet him. He hopes he does not imagine the look of pleased surprise on Hux’s face when he sees him. He has brought a bicycle, and says, “I’m sorry, I assumed you rode as well, but we can walk if you’d rather”; and Ben is quick to assure him that no, they should ride, and he goes to the stable to fetch the old Terrot Truss.

They cycle into town, down the rolling hills, and the wind streams through Ben’s hair and smells of summer. June is in full bloom and England is resplendent. The village is nestled in a valley, looking like a doll’s town, with the church at the centre and its stained-glass windows glowing like little jewels in the sunlight; as they approach it, Hux looks over his shoulder at Ben and calls, “Charming, isn’t it?”, a wry little smile on his lips.

Ben smiles back. “Absolutely.”

They lunch at a pub on the main street, where the barman knows Hux and brings him a pint of stout as soon as they’ve sat down; Ben, blushing, requests water, and gets an eyebrow-raise from the barkeep. Their meals, when they come, are hearty and hot, and Ben eats ravenously; the ride has tired him. They eat mostly in silence, both hungry, glancing at each other every so often between bites, and when they have finished Hux pays the bill despite Ben’s protestations. The ride back to Millennium House is slower, uphill, but Ben doesn’t mind.

They have their Latin lesson, and move on from verbs to nouns. Ben whips through the exercises that Hux devises for him, and Hux watches with admiration (but, too, disappointment: how much longer will these sessions last, if Ben has picked it up so quickly?) He tells him, ruefully, that, “I’m afraid you’ll be wasted reading English; you’re clearly a classicist at heart,” and has the pleasure of making Ben dip his head and scrub a hand over his hair, embarrassed but flattered.

Ben shakes his head. “I don’t know how I’ll manage at Oxford without you,” he replies, unthinking. He hurries to correct himself, flushing to the tips of his ears: “Without your help.” Heart sinking, he waits for Hux to frown and draw back — to understand; and then to make his excuses and leave.

But Hux smiles, weakly. He has half-forgotten that he is preparing Ben to leave him. “You’ll be fine,” he tells him, and knows it is true for more than Latin: why, Ben should be glad to be away from him at Oxford. “You’re doing exceedingly well, I swear it. You don’t need much help from me.” _You don’t need me,_ he means, _and I know it._

Ben looks up. “I…I should like it, though,” he protests, hesitant. “If not with Latin — maybe with…other things? I’ve no idea how much my education has differed from yours, and as the summer goes on I’m feeling less and less certain I’ll be ready.” This is half-truth and half-ruse. He does not want him to go today and not come back. He swallows. “Might you be able to help?”

“Yes,” Hux says. The reasonable part of him hisses _no,_ tells him he has not the time to spare, but the other part — the guilty, furtive, wicked part, the part that looks at Ben chewing his lip as he waits for a response and imagines how it would feel to sink his own teeth in — repeats, “Yes. Of course. With whatever you might need.”

 _If only you knew what I needed, you wouldn’t be so quick to agree._ Ben digs his nails into his thigh, unseen, and says, “Thank you.”

“I may have to put our…lessons on hold for a few days, though,” Hux says reluctantly, a concession to the hissing in his head. “A week, perhaps. To finish some business at home.”

“Of course,” Ben hurries to assure him. “Take as much time as you need — I should be low on your list. Very low. Think of me last.”

“We can still see one another.” Hux clears his throat. “Not for lessons, but just — to spend time. Plan the trip to France, perhaps. If you’d like.”

Ben hardly dares believe he’s suggested it. He answers before Hux can come to his senses: “I would.”

Hux nods. He takes out his watch, just as yesterday, and Ben is disappointed when, just as yesterday, he sighs and says, “I should be going for today.” But then — just as yesterday — he looks at Ben, and proposes, “If you aren’t busy Friday — would you care for a walk? Just a short one? I should be able to spare some time.”

 _Three days from now. Only three days._ Ben fights hard not to smile, or to throw himself at his feet and confess that he is not who Hux thinks, that he does not want what Hux thinks he wants, that he had best stop his kindnesses now before the truth comes out.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

 

* * *

 

And now three days later they are walking up the hill just off the Skywalkers’ property. There is a lull in the conversation, and Hux remembers the news from this morning, that the volunteer force in Ulster have acquired still more arms after the gun-running in April. He mentions this to Ben:

“Have you heard what’s been happening in Ireland?”

“My mother has been following the news since even before we moved here,” Ben answers, nodding. “She doesn’t think the volunteers will get what they want.”

“I do suspect the Home Rulers will have their way in the end,” Hux agrees. “One can only hope it’s done without too much bloodshed.”

They reach the top of the hill, and pause for a moment at the summit, looking down at the estates and the far-distant village below. It is evening and the air is warm, the crickets are cooing in the bushes. The grass smells sweet and clean. Ben stretches, closing his eyes, and Hux takes out his cigarette-case: “Cigarette?” he offers.

“Thanks.”

Hux lights it for him, and Ben flops down on the grass, sprawling out on his stomach and raising the cigarette to his lips. Hux lights another for himself, snapping the case shut, and then lies down, carefully, next to him, maintaining a distinct distance between them. He props his hand on one elbow and takes a brief pull, inhaling, conscious of Ben’s lips and his hands and the cigarette moving between them.

“D’you think there’ll be a war, in Ireland?” Ben asks after a moment.

Hux considers for a moment, and then he nods, slowly. “I don’t think it’s unlikely.”

Nor does the rest of the country: the headlines these days are fretful, unwilling to declare anything with certainty; but civil war, at least, seems possible. Hux says as much to Ben. “I shouldn’t imagine England will get involved; if anything happens, it should be domestic, and sort itself out quickly.”

“If England did have to intervene, though — would you have to go?”

There is a tentative anxiety in Ben’s voice. Hux had been staring down the hill, lost in thoughts of Ireland, but now he looks over, surprised.

“I might,” he says, after a moment. “Or I might not.” He looks down at the cigarette smouldering in his hand. “But nothing’s happened yet.”

“Not yet,” Ben echoes. He takes a long drag, and says no more.

Hux looks away from him, aware that his gaze has lingered. He had not given it much thought before, but he hopes, now, quite firmly, that there will be no Irish war.

There is a silence. The sky is all the colours of a ripe peach, and the air as soft as its skin; but:

“This has always been my least favourite time of year,” Hux confesses.

Ben looks over, surprised: “Really?”

Hux nods. “I don’t like the heat, first of all. But when I was young this was always the time when I had to be at home. I lived at school from my seventh birthday onwards, and I always managed it so I could stay there over the shorter holidays, but summers I had no choice.” He takes a drag on his cigarette, regretting now that he has opened this line of conversation. “I missed my mother, of course, and I was glad to see her; but coming home meant seeing my father, too.”

Ben understands. He senses, too, Hux’s discomfort, and changes the subject slightly: “Did you like being at school? You must’ve, to stay there.”

Hux shrugs. “I didn’t, really. I wasn’t…well-liked. I liked the routines of school, the discipline of it, and I did well in my classes; but it was…a lonely time.” He shrugs, again, as if trying to convince himself it doesn’t matter, _and it doesn’t, not anymore._

“Did you have friends at home, then? If not at school?” Ben shifts on his side, to look at him; his heart goes out to Hux, to the solitary, isolated child who hides just behind this composed veneer.

“Well — not exactly,” Hux says, sheepish. “I had my mother. And Rae.”

“Rae?” Ben’s immediate reaction is a stab of jealousy. _You have no right._

“My governess,” Hux explains, and Ben feels a cruel and ludicrous swoop of relief. “My father insisted that I call her Ms Sloane, but when he wasn’t around, to my mother and me she was only ever Rae.”

He smiles, warming. “I adored her. She was brilliant, and put up with no nonsense; she was quick to tell me off if I was being foolish — but unlike in my father’s case, I listened to her. My mother was always fragile, even before she got sick, so it was Rae who oversaw much of my education before I went to Charterhouse. And she approved of my wanting to join the military, where my mother did not.” He winces, slightly. “I do regret the rows we had over that, now. I always sided with Rae against her.”

“Your father must have been happy.”

Hux laughs without mirth.  He takes out his case and lights another cigarette, offers one to Ben, who takes it. The match flares and then wisps out, and the case closes with a hard _snap._ “He’d have preferred that I stood up for myself, instead of relying on the hired Negress for support. But yes; regardless of my mother’s objections, I was always going to have a military career. It was better for all of us if I accepted that.”

“Did you want to, though? Truly? Or was it only to please your father?”

“I did want it. I have never considered any other path, nor, I daresay, do I think I would have, even if I hadn’t been his son.”

Ben cannot argue with this; he cannot see Hux’s nature lending itself so well to anything but military discipline. _Command and control._ “You were destined for it,” he says, “destined for glory,” and is rewarded with a small smile from Hux.

“Well, perhaps. I have always hoped to make major by thirty,” he confesses, drawing deep on the fresh cigarette. “Even my father didn’t do that.”

“Major at thirty,” Ben repeats, laughing a little. “Ambitious, isn’t that? My father was promoted just before he turned forty.” _And he was in line for a promotion to lieutenant-colonel just before he died._ His cheerful tone falters. “These things take time.”

Hux sees his face cloud over, briefly, but before he can ask what’s the matter, Ben says, “But I think you’re capable of it. And if a war with Ireland _does_ break out, anything could happen.”

“Yes,” Hux agrees. “Battlefield promotions are a sure-fire way to move up the ranks, if you’re brave and lucky enough. That’s how my father did it, in the Boer — it’s only his injury that stopped him from rising even higher.” He lifts his chin, unconsciously. “I plan to outshine him.”

“Just don’t get yourself hurt along the way.”

Ben has spoken with an unprecedented sombreness — and Hux notices. He looks over at Ben, who self-consciously fumbles his cigarette to his lips, apparently feeling that he’s crossed some line.

There is a pause — one heartbeat, two — and then:

“I won’t,” Hux says, softly, serious now, too. 

The gentle summer air suddenly feels oppressive. Ben finishes his cigarette, quickly, inhaling too fast. He coughs. “Tell me about school,” he requests, bumbling. “I — I went to prep school too, but I’d imagine it was different, over here. What were your classes like? Your classmates? Did you do sports? I tried to play tennis for a few years, but I was never any good —”

“I played cricket,” Hux cuts him off. “And I boxed, a little.” The cricket had been at his father’s insistence, and the boxing out of necessity: for how else was a slip of a boy with no friends to survive that most vicious and darkest of jungles, the English boys’ boarding school, but with his fists — however small and pale they might be? “But I was never one for sport, either. That didn’t get me very far or make me too many friends once I joined the OTC.”

“What’s that?”

“Officers’ Training Corps. One completes military training alongside their regular schooling, and then can go on to Sandhurst and the army if they like.”

“And that’s what you did.”

“Yes. I started later than my classmates, though; I was old enough, but I’d missed rather a lot of school when I was twelve, because — well, you know why.”

When he was twelve, Hux had spent more than half of the school year at home: his mother died that September, just after his birthday and just before the start of school. By the time he returned to Charterhouse, after the Easter vacation, he was thoroughly behind in his studies. And when the OTC program was implemented three years later, to his dismay he was still barred from starting his training. Although _he_ felt he’d more than caught up in school, the administration’s opinion had differed.

How he’d longed to join the other boys on the games field, drilling in neat rows and learning to handle rifles; even in the classroom sessions, on theory and map-reading and leadership skills. Hux’s roommate had told him with disdain that they were boring as sin, everyone yawning through them and the colour-sergeants barking at them to stay sharp; but Hux would have put out an eye to be able to join them.

“Did most of the rest of them go on to join up?” Ben wants to know. He’s lying on his side now, his second cigarette dying in his hand as he listens attentively to Hux.

“Quite a few, yes,” Hux nods. The same boys he’d been afraid of, who’d bullied him at school, had followed him to Sandhurst, which he had hoped would be his escape; and his first months there had been, to his crushing disappointment, all too similar to those lonely, fearful days at school. Soon enough, though, things changed:

“But many of them didn’t stick it out. Probably half of those who’d come with me had dropped out by the end of our first year.” Hux smiles, slightly, remembering even now the vicious satisfaction he’d felt, knowing that finally, finally — despite all the other boys’ taunts and harassment — in the end, when it mattered, he was stronger, braver, _better_ than them.

“And then after you finished, you joined the army right away?”

“No,” Hux answers. “They offered me a place even before I’d graduated, but I arranged to have it held for me, and took a year for myself.” This decision, even four years on, still puzzles him: it had been so unlike him, so unexpected, and yet he knows he’d needed it. “I was only nineteen, and I’d only known life under my father’s thumb and then at school; I wanted a change of scenery before I threw myself into another routine, so I took a flat in London and spent a year there on my own.”

“How did your father feel about that?” Ben’s mouth twists wryly.

“He wasn’t happy,” Hux confirms. “I seem to recall being called _weak_ , when I told him my plans _._ Or was it _useless?_ Perhaps both.”

Ben winces, at this. “I’ve heard that one,” he says. _“Disappointment. Good-for-nothing,_ too.”

Hux raises a mock toast to him: “All too familiar.” They share a dry smile.

“I wish I had the kind of…direction that you do,” Ben says, after a moment. “Ambition. A path all set out for you. I’ve never felt like that — like I know what I’m meant to be doing.”

“Well, what do you want to be doing? Art, you said?”

Ben is pleased that he remembers. “Yes. If I could.”

“Are you good at it?”

Ben shrugs, shy. “I think so,” he says. “Maybe. All right, at least.”

“Could I — see some of it? Your art, sometime?” Hux is embarrassed not to have asked sooner, and not to sound more informed on the subject; he doesn’t even know in what medium Ben works.

Ben flushes. “If you’d like,” he says quietly. He thinks of the portrait of Hux that he’d drawn the night they met, and the several more that have appeared in his sketchbook since then. “They’re just drawings. Nothing very special. Or at least” — he swallows — “my father never thought they were.”

“I’d like to see them all the same.” Hux looks over at him, and smiles, wanting him to know that he genuinely cares. “Prove your father wrong.”

Ben looks down, his cheeks burning. “I don’t know about that,” he murmurs. He doesn’t know what else to say, flattered and embarrassed and guilty all at once, and so is silent; but after a moment he speaks again, not wanting the conversation to end.

“How was London?” he asks.

Hux winces. _Speaking of paths, London is where I lost my way._

He recalls, in quick succession, late nights wandering the streets alone, wishing for a gun or a drink or a mouth on his cock; looking at portraits in the British Museum and feeling queerly empty inside; a loneliness that he’d thought he’d left at school but that he soon discovered he carried with him, in the pit of his chest, in his bones. A string of faceless boys in dark, unlovely flats, dirty clothes strewn on dirtier floors.

“Uneventful,” he says. He shakes his head to clear the sordid memories, for fear they will be visible on his face. “Not worth discussing, really.”

“Did it give you what you wanted, at least?”

 _Boys. Sex. Love, I thought._ “What?”

“Distance. Independence. Time to yourself.”

“I…” Hux can’t look at him. “Yes,” he says quietly. “I suppose it did.”

“Good,” Ben says, as if that decides something. “I’m glad for you. That you had that.”

 _You wouldn’t be, if you knew the whole of it._ “Thank you.”

The sky has darkened slightly. The village has begun to glow, downhill. Hux is out of cigarettes. Thoughts of London have agitated him: they have no place here, with Ben. The memories feel soiled, as if the dirt of the city clings to them, to him, and he will not risk sullying Ben, too. Quickly, too quickly, he stands, leaving Ben on the grass to look up at him, startled.

“We should go,” Hux says, abruptly. “It’s later than I thought.”

Ben hauls himself up, too, obediently. “All right,” he says, masking his disappointment. He had not thought ever to hear Hux speak so candidly, and hadn’t wanted him to stop; he feels he has finally begun to peel away his shell.

Hux goes to where their bicycles lay, tipped-over on the grass, and pulls up Ben’s and then his own. “Here,” he says. He had not been lying, it is late, and although his father will likely be too drunk already to notice his absence, he does not want to risk it. “Lead the way.”

They cycle back down the hill in the soft summer dark. Ben keeps quiet; he’ll let Hux carry on the conversation if he wishes; but he doesn’t speak. Ben bites his lip, hard, where Hux cannot see it.

Hux drops him at Millennium House’s stables. He didn’t want to say it on the ride back, but all along he has been thinking furiously, devising an excuse to see him again without forcing himself upon him. They’ll have their lessons, yes, but he doesn’t want his time with Ben to be confined to books and papers all summer.

“I had an idea,” Hux says, as Ben dismounts. Hux balances on the balls of his feet, one hand on the handlebars. “For a different kind of — tutelage.”

Ben, wheeling the bicycle inside, looks over: “Yes?”

“Do you know how to shoot?”

Ben frowns. “No.”

“Would you — care to learn?”

Ben’s father had tried, once, when Ben was younger, to teach him to handle a gun, at his friend Leonard’s house in upstate New York. But Ben had never taken to it, or enjoyed the lessons at all. His father had been impatient and quick to criticise, and when he’d taken over and shot the bird that Ben had been (quite intentionally) missing, Ben had broken down in tears. Han had given up, after that, and the matter was dropped; but Ben knew his father had been sorely disappointed. _I couldn’t be like him._

So he nods, now, looking at Hux. The thought of killing anything, even a bird or small game, makes him feel ill, and guilty besides, twelve years old again; but he nods.

“Yes,” he says to Hux. “I would.” 

What he means is, _I’ll take anything you want to give me._

Hux looks pleased. “I’d be happy to teach you. Is Monday morning all right?”

Ben has no plans; he never does, but with Hux. “I should think so.”

“Monday, then. The twenty-ninth.” Hux feels desperately guilty, but cannot help smiling, at the prospect of more time spent with Ben. “Enjoy your weekend. Avoid Latin if you can help it.”

Ben smiles back. “I’ll try my best.”

“Goodbye, Ben.” Hux turns his bicycle around, puts his feet on the pedals.

Ben raises a hand, watches him set off. “Goodbye, Hux. Thank you for today.”

 

* * *

 

Ben is impatient all weekend, waiting for Monday. He is trying to accustom himself again to the thought of blood, to handling a gun, just as he had so many years ago; he feels almost sorry that his father is not here to see him try again.

Hux comes to fetch him early Monday morning, before even the paper-boys have made their rounds. Ben hardly minds the early start: this way he will not spend yet another day restless, dreaming. When the knock comes, Ben is already waiting, dressed in old clothes and riding-boots. He jumps up to get the door, swallowing his nerves.

“Good morning,” says Hux, whispering, in polite concession to the hour. He’s dressed in a belted tweed jacket and matching breeches, tall leather boots clinging to his slim calves. A cap is perched atop his red hair, and there is a holster at each of his hips.

He looks terrifically English, and quite dashing besides. Ben swallows. “Good morning,” he replies, in an equally low tone. The rest of the house is still asleep. “Do I need to…?” He gestures at Hux’s getup, very different from his own.

“You’ll be all right as you are.” Hux is charmed by Ben’s ears, sticking out from beneath a flat cap like his own. “You’re ready, then? Shall we be off?”

Ben nods. His eyes dart down to the two guns. “Let’s go.”

The walk to Huxley Hall seems shorter every time Ben makes it. The air is morning-crisp, but already it is shaping up to be a beautiful day; the moors stretch out wide and inviting before them, sloping gently into lush hills. Wildflowers, dandelions, and flitting insects dot the expanse of green.

“What are we shooting today?” Ben works up the nerve to ask, as they pass through the woods. He pushes one sleeve up to the elbow to scratch at a bug-bite on his arm, and then the other, to match.

“Oh, nothing, really,” Hux answers, surprised. “I thought we’d start you out with stationary targets. Nothing living. Is that all right?”

Ben has never been so relieved. “Yes,” he says fervently. “More than all right.” He gestures to the holsters, feeling far more confident now: “No rifles?”

Hux shakes his head. “I prefer handguns,” he admits. “More elegant.” His lips twitch wryly.

Ben recalls his father shouldering his rifle, firing off several rounds in a row until his target — a rabbit, a doe; once, a whole flock of grouse — fell to the ground, limp and still and dead. He’d always hated the long, sinister look of the gun, and had felt clumsy and dangerous wielding it himself. An _elegant_ pistol will be a relief, and he tells Hux so: “Fine by me.”

“Good.”

They walk on a little longer, until Hux turns them down a path out back of the stables, leading down a rise until they reach a flat expanse. A table has been hauled out, and atop it, resting in a neat row, are perhaps a dozen empty glass jars.

Ben feels a pang of _something_ in his chest at the thought of Hux setting this all up early this morning (or, knowing him, last night): dragging the table out from the stable or the house, and collecting the jars and then spacing them evenly apart, straightening them and standing back to see how they looked. Maybe raising an imaginary pistol, taking aim with one eye closed, and then hurrying over to make some minor change again until the targets were perfect. _A soldier through and through._

“Here we are,” Hux announces. He gestures to the table: “Our targets. Now, shall we get you oriented?” He unclips both the guns from his belt with care, and hands the larger holster to Ben, who takes it uncertainly. “Go on, take it out,” Hux encourages him when he hesitates. “It’s not loaded.”

Obediently, Ben removes the handgun from its holster. He finds it to be heavy, blunt-nosed, thuggish-looking; while the pistol that Hux now holds, reverently, in his hand is slim, scalloped, glinting steely in the morning light. _Elegant, indeed._

Hux sees him looking, and says with pride, “It’s a Webley 1887. I inherited it from an uncle who died in the Boer.” His thumb strokes reflexively over the smooth, well-worn wooden handle. He nods at Ben’s: “Yours is a Colt. My father picked it up on a business trip to America a few years ago, but he never uses it. Now —” He sets his pistol down on the table and rummages in the many pockets of his Norfolk jacket for ammunition. “I’ll load it for you.”

Hux takes the Colt from Ben and ejects the magazine, filling it with the bullets in his hand. “There. Now, put it back into the magazine-well.” He hands the magazine, loaded, to Ben, who does as he says. “Good,” Hux says, watching carefully. “Let me do mine. Keep that pointed down, both safeties on.”

Ben resists the urge to say _Yes, sir._ Hux is good at this, more genuinely confident than Ben has ever seen him. He’s still nervous, and not sure how he feels about guns at all, but Hux’s handling them with such assertiveness is certainly…affecting him. He swallows, and watches Hux as he picks up the Webley, opens the hinge-top of the gun, and inserts six bullets into the chamber. He clicks the pistol smoothly shut again and then comes back over to Ben, who is, as instructed, standing stock-still with the Colt facing down.

“All right,” Hux says, nodding to the table and jars. “Let’s begin.”

Ben follows him over to a spot some metres back and away from the left-most jar. Hux turns to him and says, “I’ll go first. The pistols fire a little differently, but the basics are the same. Watch me and then I’ll show you what to do.”

He holds the gun with both hands, his pale fingers wrapped around the grip. He flicks the safety off and lines up his sight with utmost concentration. Ben waits, holding his breath — and then Hux puts his finger to the trigger and fires a shot, shattering the first glass jar at once.

Although he knew it was coming, the loud noise makes Ben jump. Mercifully he doesn’t drop his own gun. Hux turns around, looking proud:

“Did you see?” he asks.

Ben swallows. He’d been watching Hux’s hands, his shoulders, his body, poised. “I think you’ll need to show me. Help me, I mean.”

“Certainly.” Hux thumbs the safety back on and then sets the Webley down on the table, coming over to Ben. His heart is beating fast, from adrenalin and from the thought of touching Ben, being so close to him. He clears his throat. “All right. Stand behind your target, in line with it.”

Ben does, choosing the next jar in the line. He looks at Hux for more guidance.

“Hold up the pistol with both hands, to your eye-line. Keep it level.”

“My hands are shaking.” Ben is embarrassed, glancing over his shoulder.

“It’s all right. Here.”

Taking a deep breath, Hux goes to stand behind him. Carefully, he puts his hands on Ben’s arms, adjusting his line and steadying his grip. He can hear Ben’s shallow breathing, and licks his lips, suddenly dry. Ben’s hair, loose about his face, smells spiced and fresh, like cedar. Hux’s lips are close to his ear when he says, fighting to keep his voice steady, “There you are.”

Hux’s hands on Ben’s bared forearms are cool and strong. Ben is sure his pulse is palpable, audible, thundering as it is under his touch. When Hux releases his grip and steps back, Ben says weakly, “Thank you.”

“Both safeties off, now. The thumb and the grip.”

Ben finds them and disengages both. “One finger on the trigger,” Hux instructs him. “Squeeze slowly, and fire when you’re ready.”

Ben squints at the target. His hands are sweating. He squeezes the trigger — and misses. The bullet hits the lip of the second jar, _pinging_ atonally as it glances off and lands on the ground behind the table. “Damn,” he curses softly. He feels he’s disappointed Hux, and turns round to him, apologetic: “I missed.”

“You’re doing fine. Try again,” Hux encourages.

Ben nods, nervous, and lines up another shot. He swallows hard, aiming at the centre of the same jar; but when he fires, misses again, his anxious hands skewing the bullet’s path to the right. He bites his lip, hard, and turns to Hux again. “I’m not getting it.”

“Hardly anyone does, on their first go,” Hux soothes. “Or even their second. Here, I’ll help you again.”

Once again, hardly believing his luck, Hux goes to him, stands behind him, lays careful hands on his arms. His back is pressed against Ben’s; he can hardly avoid resting his chin on his shoulder, so close are they in height. Ben’s body is warm, the muscles in his back tense and firm. Hux wants to stroke down his spine and calm him.

“Grip it tighter,” Hux says. “Don’t be afraid of it. Relax.”

Ben holds the Colt tighter. “Will you — can you guide me?” he mumbles.

“Yes.” Hux reaches up to Ben’s hands, aligns his line of sight with his as best he can. He lowers the pistol slightly, positioning it where it needs to be. He wraps his hand around Ben’s wrist to steady him, and knows that when Ben swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, it is only out of nerves. “Pull the trigger when you’re ready,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

Ben fires. The jar shatters. The recoil sends him jerking back, halfway into Hux’s arms. “I’m sorry,” he says breathlessly, stepping off the booted foot he’s trod on. He peers out to see the jar in shards on the table, and a disbelieving grin steals shyly across his face. “I did it!”

“You did.” Hux smiles at him, touched by his pride. “Would you like to try again?”

Ben hesitates, and then decides: “I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure? You were beginning to understand.”

Ben shakes his head. “I’m finished. Too much excitement for one day. I’ll…watch you, though, if you’re not done.” In truth, he has grown greedy — for Hux’s touch, more of it — but dares not risk giving himself away by begging for further instruction. He’ll content himself with watching him instead, those long hands wrapped around the gun.

“If you’re sure.” But Hux is pleased to pick up his own pistol again. It’s been a while since he’s shot for sport, not army training, and he realises he’s missed it, the feeling of absolute control that only finds him when he has a weapon in his hand.

He decides to show off a little, now that Ben’s only watching. He switches the Webley to one hand, his left, and then lines up for another shot. He feels Ben’s eyes on him, rapt, and can’t help but preen under his gaze, shooting three jars in a row with a reckless flair. They explode on impact with three satisfying _bangs._

“You shoot left?” Ben calls to him from a way back, once the noise and smoke have subsided.

Hux turns to him. “Yes,” he answers. “Why?”

“You don’t write with your left,” Ben says, coming closer with his hands in his pockets. He has put the Colt back in its holster and laid it carefully down on the grass. “Aren’t you right-handed?”

“Not officially.” Hux lowers his arm. “I’m left-handed, technically; but my father made me learn to write, and do everything else, with my right. He said it put me at an unnecessary disadvantage; insisted I have my left arm strapped down in the schoolroom, the whole bit.” He shrugs, a wry glint in his eye. “But when I joined the OTC, I told them I shot left, so that’s how I was taught. Call it an act of rebellion.”

The matter of his dominant hand had been one of the many and endless domestic battles of Hux’s childhood. It had seemed utterly pointless at the time, and frustrated Hux to no end; he can’t count how many times he’d broken down in tears in front of his tutors after being reprimanded for his poor work with his right hand, when he knew he could complete the tasks perfectly with his left, if only he hadn’t been forbidden to. But Hux sees now that his father’s refusal to compromise, despite even Marielle’s protests, was a brutal, domineering — but perhaps, in Brendon’s mind, caring — way of ensuring that his delicate, withdrawn, _unusual_ son turned out at least somewhat normal. _It hasn’t worked, though, has it?_

“You’re very good at it,” Ben says. “No matter which hand you’re using.” He ducks his head, looks at his boots.

“Thank you,” Hux says. He is aware of sweat sticking his shirt and heavy jacket to his back, of the warmth of his legs in their trousers and high boots. The sun is creeping higher in the sky; it must be almost ten, if not later. He’ll have to return home soon, and get started on the endless pile of estate business for the day. He sighs, reluctant, and Ben looks up:

“What is it?”

“It’s getting late. I’ll just finish this round, and then we should be getting back.”

“Oh,” Ben says. He was hungry when they set out, but was soon distracted from it; now, though, his stomach rumbles again, reminding him. He makes a decision. “When you’ve finished — would you like to come back to mine for breakfast? Everyone else should be awake by now.”

Hux’s eyebrows arch in surprise. “I’d love to,” he answers. “If you’ll have me.”

“There’s always too much food. Elsie thinks we don’t eat enough. Or I don’t, at least. She’s determined to fatten me up before Oxford.”

 _Oxford._ Hux is reminded yet again that his time with Ben is finite. “Well, if there’s enough to go round, I’ll gladly partake. Here, hand me yours — I’ll finish off that round as well.”

Ben gives him back the Colt, and Hux fires its remaining shots first, emptying the magazine with confident speed. He picks up his Webley again and shoots the last two bullets with resounding _pops_ and puffs of smoke: a more theatrical gun than its newer fellow.

He pushes the stirrup pin and the spent rounds are ejected. “There. Finished.” Tucking both guns back into the holsters, he clips them again to his belt. “I’ll come out later and clean up the glass,” he says, nodding to the mess they’ve made: the mention of food has made him hungry, and he doesn’t want to waste what time he has with Ben.

“Did you have a good time?” Hux asks, a few minutes later, en route to Millennium House. Ben has been quiet, and he knows he shouldn’t worry — he is coming to see that this is just how Ben is — but he feels the need to break the silence all the same.

“Yes,” Ben says at once. “I know I’m not — I wasn’t very good. But you were a good teacher.”

“You did very well,” Hux tells him sincerely. “You’re not meant to be a marksman, perhaps, but hardly anybody is.” He spreads his hands: “Dear me; first Latin, now shooting. You’ll be a proper Englishman in no time.”

“Will you take me fox-hunting, next?” Ben replies gamely. “Fit me for a set of tweeds?”

Hux laughs. “However else will you survive at Oxford but in tweed?”

They share a smile as the house comes into view. Ben leads the way up the drive, and inside the foyer calls, “I’m home!”

“In here, Ben,” comes Leia’s voice from the breakfast-room. Hux and Ben divest themselves of their boots, grass and mud stuck to the soles; Hux unclasps the holsters and lays them, with his jacket, on the hall table, relieved to take off the thick, unseasonal garment. He follows Ben into the breakfast-room.

“Good morning,” Ben greets his family. Hux notices how much more reserved his tone grows, almost at once, when he addresses them. “I’ve brought Mr Huxley for breakfast.”

“Good morning,” Rey answers for the table, distractedly. She picks up her knife and begins to butter the slice of toast on her plate with great determination, a furrow between her brows. At her side, Finn appears deeply engrossed in his book, but his eyes dart too quickly over the page to be taking in the words. Ben frowns.

“Why is it so quiet in here?” he asks, and it is true: aside from the sound of Rey’s knife on her toast and the clink of Finn’s teacup as he sets it down in its saucer, the atmosphere in the room is distinctly subdued.

Luke is seated at the head of the table, frowning down at a newspaper from behind his wire-rimmed reading glasses. Leia, at his side, is writing a letter, her pen flying frantically over the page. Luke looks up at Ben’s words. “There’s been news,” he says, sombre. “From Austria.”

He holds up the _Telegraph._ On page thirty-six, the headline reads:

_TRAGEDY OF THE AUSTRIAN THRONE.  
MURDER OF ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND AND HIS WIFE._

“Murder,” Ben repeats, his brows knitting. He drops into the empty seat beside Rey, and motions to Hux to sit down as well. “What happened?”

The maid hurries to fetch a plate for Hux and pour tea for the both of them. Hux thanks her, and reaches for kippers and toast from the dishes at the centre of the table as Luke explains what’s happened:

“It happened yesterday. They were on a Balkan tour this week, and arrived in Sarajevo on Thursday for the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. A group of Bosnian nationalist rebels tried to bomb their car while they drove through the city yesterday afternoon, and then one madman among them succeeded in shooting them both. They both died before they got to hospital.” Luke shakes his head. “Their poor children.”

“And the assassin? The rebels? Were they captured?” Hux speaks up, frowning.

“Not yet. The whole lot of them seem to have gotten away.”

“What happens now?” Ben has a forkful of fried egg but isn’t eating it. “What will the Austrians do?”

“The archduke’s nephew is the heir presumptive now,” says Leia, looking up from her letter. Ben can see several ink-blots where she has written in a hurry. “But nothing else is certain. One can only imagine their German allies will stand by them, and press for retaliation from the Serbs.”

“And what will that mean?” Rey cuts in, her toast abandoned. “Surely they won’t go to war?”

“The Austrians should listen to the Balkan states’ demands,” Finn adds, looking up from his book. “Maybe it can be worked out diplomatically.” He looks worried.

Leia sighs. “Let’s hope so. If it can’t be…”

Her unspoken words hang in the air. For a moment, there is an uneasy silence, everyone glancing around the table at one another as if to find the answers there.

“Let’s hope,” Luke says, finally, “that if anything happens, they’ll keep it to the Continent.”

“Hear, hear,” Leia says drily. She shakes her head, and goes back to her letter, and it’s as if the rest of the room has been given permission to unfreeze. Rey takes a bite of her toast, and Finn turns the page of his book, and Hux takes a sip of his tea to find it has gone cold. The rest of the meal passes in silence.

“Thank you for breakfast,” Hux says when he’s finished, setting down his fork. He lost his appetite after hearing the news: three kippers and half a piece of buttered toast remain on his plate, congealing. “I should be going.”

“I’ll see you out.” Ben rises in a hurry to accompany him from the room.

In the foyer, Hux clips the holsters to his hips and shrugs his jacket back on, regretting the uncomfortably warm walk that’s sure to come.

“What do you think of that, then?” Ben asks him. “The archduke?”

“It’s terribly sad for the imperial family,” Hux answers, adjusting his lapels. “But hopefully it won’t grow into anything bigger. They’ll catch the assassins, lock them up, and perhaps the Austro-Hungarians will listen more carefully to their people’s demands in the future. I’m sure that’ll be all. A nasty business, but quickly dealt with.”

Ben seems less optimistic. “I hope you’re right,” he says uncertainly.

Hux shrugs, standing. “They’re far away from us. Let them sort it out amongst themselves.”

“Yes. Yes, I — I’m sure they will.” Ben clears his throat. “Thank you again for this morning,” he says, seeming to come back to himself. “Shall we have a lesson tomorrow?”

“If you think you can stomach more Latin.”

“I can.”

Hux smiles. “Tomorrow.”

 _“Cras,”_ Ben corrects him, in Latin, giving a shy, teasing grin.

Hux groans. “Enough of that,” he scolds, one hand on the doorknob. “Goodbye, Ben.”

 _“Vale,”_ Ben retorts, his grin widening.

Hux is still smiling when he gets home. All thoughts of the assassination are gone from his mind, replaced with Ben’s sweet, crooked smile.

 

* * *

 

In their lesson Tuesday afternoon, Ben speeds through the first three declensions, until Hux puts down his pen as if waving a white flag. “I don’t think I can take any more for the day,” he tells Ben. “I admit defeat.”

“I was only just beginning!” Ben protests, a mischievous grin on his face. “Nouns are so easy. You should’ve started me on them and then moved to verbs; I could’ve _really_ impressed you.”

Hux surveys his smiling face, so open and full of light, as he has so rarely seen it. The pain of remembering all his years of Latin (suppressed forcefully by now) is nothing, in comparison to the glow in his chest that he feels, knowing Ben is happy. “You’ve done so anyway,” he tells him, and is rewarded with a wider smile from Ben. “Have mercy.”

“Oh, fine,” Ben says. “Should we do history? English, for a while, to give you a rest?”

They have just begun on other subjects besides Latin, to ensure Ben’s education will be well-rounded come autumn, and Hux much prefers their discussions of the classics and the Crimean War to the endless lists of nouns and verbs he’s drawn up for Ben these last weeks. He wants nothing more than to say yes, but today he knows he can’t. He’s been avoiding the subject all day, but can see no choice but to bring it up now. He sighs:

“I’d like to, Ben, believe me; but I have to be going.”

“Already? It’s early still,” Ben objects, disappointed. Of late Hux’s stays have been bleeding into tea-time, and sometimes he can be persuaded to stay for supper as well. “Does your father need you home that badly?”

“Today, yes,” Hux admits reluctantly. He has been pushing his luck, staying later and later at Ben’s each day, and his father, for the most part, has not noticed: Hux has only made himself go home for fear of overstaying his welcome, and by extension giving Ben reason to suspect that his intentions are more sordid than he supposes. Today, though, he has no excuse. “I have to get home and pack. We’re going into London tomorrow morning, on the early train.”

Ben is startled, his eyebrows shooting up. “London? Tomorrow?” he repeats. “Why?”

Hux sighs. It has all been arranged very quickly: his father emerged long enough from his drunken haze to read the news on Monday, and has decided that a trip to London is in order, post-haste. “My father has Austrian business associates, and after yesterday’s news, he wants to meet with them and ensure that their relations will not change. I think he’s being paranoid” — showing more interest in his own affairs than he has in months, perhaps years — “but he won’t budge.”

“How long will you be gone?” Ben sounds anxious.

“Less than a fortnight, we hope,” Hux replies. “A week, if all goes well.”

“How many meetings can your father possibly have to attend?”

Hux sighs. Here is what he has truly been dreading. “Well…” He reaches up and scratches the healing sunburn at the back of his neck, wincing where his blunt nails touch the peeling skin. Ben is looking at him in wide-eyed impatience, almost fright. “He isn’t only going to be seeing business associates. There’s also…someone for me to meet.”

He stops there, unwilling to go into more detail; but he knows he’ll have to, when Ben’s brow wrinkles and he looks at him, uncomprehending. Hux sighs, again, and finally expels, “A family friend and her daughter are in London for the season. The girl’s mother reached out to my father, and suggested that perhaps the two of us should dine together if we were ever in town at the same time; and now, it seems, we will be.”

The girl’s mother, Theresa Aloysius, had been a great friend of Marielle’s, but had lost contact with them after she died. Hux hasn’t seen her daughter — her name, he thinks but cannot be certain, is something atrocious like Laetitia — since she was seven and he was twelve, at his mother’s funeral, now more than a decade ago. He had paid her absolutely no mind then and does not expect to now.

He had not even expected that his father would respond to Mrs Aloysius’ invitation, but apparently Hux’s persistent lack of romantic connections has penetrated even Brendon’s drink-fogged consciousness, and deeply enough to push him to human contact, besides. Like it or not, Hux is lunching with Laetitia _(or perhaps Cecily? Araminta? Primrose?)_ at his father’s club on Friday.

“A girl,” Ben repeats, his voice careful. “Oh. How — how old is she?”

“Eighteen, by now. The same age as you,” Hux replies in the same forcedly neutral tone. “She’s just been presented at court.” And thank God for that, he thinks: he has been saved from having to accompany her to her debutantes’ ball.

“And you’ll be…seeing her?” _Courting her,_ Ben cannot say. He feels a spreading numbness. _So this is how it ends._

“Yes,” Hux says, but without enthusiasm. “I suspect I’ll be asked to accompany her to…whatever engagements she might have planned while I’m in town. Dances and luncheons and teas and such.” His nose wrinkles. “Dreadful stuff, all of it.”

The disdain in his voice is surely only for Ben’s benefit, out of friendly kindness. Ben is certain already that Hux will come home in two weeks with a fiancée, and never spend time with him like this again. They will be married by summer’s end and that will be that, Ben’s passion unrequited, stillborn, and quickly buried in shame. _As it should be,_ he tells himself fiercely. _There’s no other way for this to end. You should know that by now._

“I’m sure it won’t be as bad as you think.” He forces himself to keep his tone light. “You never know; you might even enjoy yourself.” The words sound hollow even to him.

Hux hates that he feels wounded by Ben’s lack of response. He berates himself — _did you expect him to rage at you, to forbid you seeing her? —_ but is perturbed all the same. _Enough. Stop this._

“I doubt it,” he says, shrugging, matching Ben’s unaffected tone. “I shall be glad to be back in London, though, at the very least.” This is a lie: the thought of London and all its memories makes him feel vaguely ill, when the alternative is the unspoiled sky, the summer grass, these afternoons with Ben.

“Well, regardless, I wish you a pleasant trip. I hope your father’s business goes as planned.” Ben is withdrawn, now, formal and stiff, although his thoughts are rapidly spiralling into misery. He stands from the desk-chair and goes to the door, suggesting that Hux go: suddenly he does not want him here. “You’d best get to your packing.”

Hux takes the hint. _See, he wants you gone already, he’ll be overjoyed to have two weeks without you._ “Yes, I should,” he replies, and follows Ben out the door and down the stairs.

“Well, goodbye, then,” Ben says at the front door. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

“Maybe sooner,” Hux reminds him, feeling pathetic as he does.

Ben doesn’t even allow himself to hope. _If he does come home early, it’ll be with a girl on his arm and a ring on her finger._ “Travel safely.”

“Thank you.”

They regard each other for a moment, Hux on the door-step with his hat in his hand, Ben leaning on the jamb and filling the doorway with his bulk as if to prevent Hux’s re-entry. An awkwardness the likes of which they have not known since the very start of their acquaintance settles between them once again — and then Ben steps back, and closes the door, without another word to Hux. A look of sadness, almost beseeching, crosses his face before he disappears.

 _You’re seeing things,_ Hux reminds himself. He stands stock-still on the stoop for a moment, and then turns resentfully for home. Already he hates Laetitia Aloysius.

Ben, inside, leans against the door and closes his eyes. Ashamed, he feels a welling behind his eyes, a tightening of his throat; he swipes angrily at his cheeks before the tears can fall, and then thunders up the stairs to his bedroom. His pencil finds paper, and he draws Hux, over and over again; but now, too, as if divorced from his free will, his pencil adds, beside him, a woman’s lips, her chest, her hips. Ben tears out the page, crumples it, and throws it on the fire.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it looks like a Brideshead reference, it's a Brideshead reference. Apologies for any errors in the Latin or the way Hux goes about teaching it; I took one semester of it a year ago, hated every second of it, and have since repressed it fiercely. I'm on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com)!


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

 

All next day Ben is sullen, keeping to himself, completing all the remaining Latin exercises Hux had drawn up before he left and cursing his own carelessness when he finishes them all too soon. He flips through the grammar and drills himself, half-heartedly, but the verbs don’t look the same when written in his own hand and not Hux’s; the language is less friendly, now, without Hux looking on and offering praise, shaking his head and telling Ben, again, that he is far better at this than Hux has ever been, that he admires him most thoroughly for it.

Ben incorrectly declines four nouns in a row and then throws down his pen with a huff, splattering ink across the page and marring all his previous work. He cannot bring himself to care a whit. He pushes back his chair with force and stands, throwing himself down on his bed and then lying there, unmoving, staring at the ceiling and stewing in anger, self-pity, and loneliness. How quickly it has crept back in, in Hux’s absence. How he has come to need him.

Ben closes his eyes in an effort to stop this train of thought, but sees only Hux taking a girl by the hand, kissing her on the mouth, putting an arm around her waist to lay her on a bed… He sits up, gives a noise of utter irritation, and then paces, restless, around the room, knocking over the stacks of books that have begun to accumulate on the floor. They thud loudly down to hit the hardwood, but he makes no move to re-stack them, only changing his path to move around them.

His steps grow heavier and more harried as his thoughts return again and again to those damned, damning visions of Hux and the nameless, faceless girl. He pictures creamy bare shoulders and a string of pearls around her dainty neck, and kicks aside _War & Peace _with a particularly vicious shove; it flops to its side and falls open, quite defeated.

 His fourth circuit is interrupted by a knock at his bedroom door.

“Ben?” It’s his mother. She pushes the door open slightly, looking around. “Are you all right? I heard a noise.”

“Fine,” Ben grunts, not stopping his pacing. He jabs his toe at a volume of Dickens that lies inconsiderately in his path. “Leave me alone.”

He has taken too sharp a tone. Leia frowns, deeply, and steps inside the room, closing the door firmly behind her. “Mind your mouth, young man,” she tells him, coming up to him and seizing his arm, stilling him. “What is it, then? Tell me.”

“It’s nothing,” Ben insists irritably, shaking off his mother’s hand. “I don’t want to talk.”

_“Nothing_ doesn’t make a mess of your room like this.” Leia does not budge. _“Nothing_ doesn’t put such a scowl on your face. What is it, Ben? I want to help,” she says calmly. Her son has been tantrum-prone since his earliest days. After Han’s death, though, those fits had transmuted themselves into days and days of haunted silence, a tangible melancholy, culminating in that darkest night... She cannot let him descend so far ever again.

 “I know you,” she presses, when Ben is stubbornly silent. “I know when something’s wrong. Please, Ben, tell me.”

Ben finally ceases his pacing. He goes to his bed and sits down, hard, upon it, facing away from his mother, his hands balled in his lap. “It’s nothing,” he repeats, but with less conviction now.

Leia comes to join him on the bed, smoothing down her straight, high-waisted skirt, and doesn’t say anything more, waiting for Ben to speak. He sighs: his mother will have the truth from him one way or another, so he may as well just say it now and save them both some time.

“It’s Hux,” he expels reluctantly, looking down at his hands. “He’s away. I’m — not doing well in my studies without his help. That’s all.”

It is half-true; Ben hopes it will be convincing enough. And Leia, instead of being suspicious, in fact looks surprised: “That’s all?”

Ben nods.

Leia shakes her head, relieved. “I thought perhaps — well, I don’t know. I expected worse.”

She had been envisioning a resurgence of the guilt and horror that had plagued Ben after Han’s death, the feeling he’d had of responsibility for it all. She hadn’t been able to assuage it, for they both knew it was not unfounded. These spells, however, have lightened, and now all but disappeared, over the course of their summer in England — as Ben has settled in, and made friends —  _or one friend, at least._

“You miss him,” Leia says. An odd thought comes to mind: that Ben is acting, now, like no-one so much as Rey, on those Sundays when Poe is delayed from his visit for one reason or another — right down to the pacing. This is so absurd, however — the situations so polarly opposed — that she dismisses the idea at once.

Ben looks up, defensive. “I just need his help. That’s all.”

“You’re allowed to miss him, too,” Leia says, giving a gentle laugh. “You _have_ been spending an awful lot of time together. It’s only normal that you should be feeling a little lost, now your routine has been interrupted.”

_Normal. Hardly._ “I suppose so,” Ben mumbles. “That’s not — that’s not what’s wrong, though. I’m fine. I’m fine,” he repeats, insistent. “Please, Mama. I just want to be alone. I’m — fine.”

“If you say so,” Leia replies, graciously letting the matter drop, now that she sees Ben is in no immediate danger or serious distress. He’ll work through this mood on his own; he always does. She has already forgotten what she thought about Rey.

She lays her hand briefly atop her son’s dark head as she stands. “Poor thing. I’ll leave you be, but if you get lonely, the rest of us are downstairs. We could play a game of bridge,” she offers. “There’s still time before tea.”

“No. I’ll stay up here. I don’t want tea, either.” Ben has no desire to see the rest of the family, to witness Finn looking in his kind, adoring way at Rey, and her gazing back as if he is the only one in the room (unless, of course, Poe Dameron is also there), affection writ plainly on both of their faces. He knows he will see in them only Hux, who is surely, by now, kissing his debutante’s hand as she takes her seat across from him at luncheon. He feels a wave of revulsion at the thought, followed by a fierce jealousy.

“All right.” Leia holds up her hands, going to the door. “I’ll fetch you for supper, then.”

Ben makes a noncommittal noise in reply. When he hears the door shutting behind her, he falls back on the bed and rolls onto his side, pressing his hands to his eyes. He sighs, hugely. He spends several minutes lying there in an almost-foetal position, listening to the noises of the house — the pipes rattling distantly as someone turns on a tap, the open-and-shut of the kitchen door as the cook receives a delivery, Rey’s laughter from the drawing-room — and then rolls onto his back again, and opens his eyes.

He decides to sleep for a while — that patented retreat into which he’d escaped so often, throughout this awful spring. If he’s lucky, perhaps he’ll be unconscious until suppertime. He shuts his eyes again and tries to fall asleep; but fails, his mind returning obsessively to those same torturous possibilities. Ben sighs, again.

He sees he has no other choice. Unbuttoning his fly and reaching into his drawers, he strokes himself to hardness and then to a grim, joyless climax, his teeth sunk into his lip and a chant of Hux’s name circling, merciless, inside his head.

He cleans himself and lies back again, feeling wretchedly satisfied. He is asleep in minutes, all through suppertime and into the night, and his dreams are free of girls in pearls.

 

* * *

 

The week passes slowly with Hux gone. On Sunday, the sixth of July, when he has been away for six days, Ben comes down for breakfast and finds Leia and Finn frowning over the _Telegraph_ again. He frowns, too, knowing instinctively that there has been more bad news.

“What’s the matter?” Ben asks as he sits down at the table. It’s only the three of them who are home, Luke and Rey having gone into town for mass. He grabs the cream and sugar and doctors the tea the maid has poured for him, and then reaches for the dishes of bacon and grilled tomatoes, his stomach rumbling. “Has something happened?”

“Leia’s prediction was right,” Finn answers him, looking up. His dark eyes are concerned. “The Austrian foreign minister sent an agent to Berlin this week, and the Kaiser has given the Austro-Hungarians his unconditional support.”

“The Germans, Austrians, and Italians are feeling threatened by Russia and the Slavs,” Leia adds, paraphrasing from the paper at which she peers intently through her spectacles. “The Kaiser wants to make peace in the Balkans by knocking Serbia out of the running entirely.” She looks up, and shakes her head. “This will lead nowhere good. I can’t see how Russia won’t get involved, now, and surely the Austrians won’t stand up against them, even with Germany on their side.”

Ben, cutting a sausage in half, pauses. “Would the Russians attack them? Are they — allowed?”

“The Austrians have more grounds to strike first than anyone; but that’s never been the Habsburgs’ way. _You, happy Austria, marry,”_ Leia quips drily. “They’ll keep trying to settle things with diplomacy, but if the Germans grow impatient, as they well might, they could pressure Franz Josef to declare war on Serbia. If that happens, Russia will spring to their defence, and then there’s no telling what might happen.”

“This Balkan disagreement seems to be metastasising, and quickly,” Finn says, echoing Rey’s words from the other day. He looks anxious, restless, and glances at the grandfather clock in the corner. He stands. “Rey will be back soon; she’ll want to discuss this with Poe on our walk.”

“No, Finn; Rey is going with Luke to the tailor’s after church,” Leia reminds him. “He needs a new suit, and I sent her with him, for fear of what he’d choose unaided. They won’t be back until the afternoon.”

Finn’s shoulders slump: this had completely slipped his mind. “Oh. Yes. Well — Poe might drop by, anyway. I’m going to change. Enjoy the rest of your breakfasts.” As he leaves, he nods to Ben and Leia, and, as always, stops to smile at the maid and thank her sincerely.

Ben fills his plate with a healthy serving of seconds while Leia pores over the paper, frowning and muttering to herself every once in a while, pushing her spectacles up with impatience when they begin to slide down her nose. Finally, though, as Ben is finishing his third cup of tea, she sets the newspaper down, seeming to have gotten all she can from it.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” she announces, letting her spectacles drop to hang by their chain around her neck. “A storm is brewing on the Continent; that’s beyond all trace of doubt. It only remains to be seen how it’ll manifest itself, and when.”

“Do you think…France will get involved at all?” Ben asks tentatively. The thought had crossed his mind sometime during his second poached egg, and it’s been nagging at him since: _Will this affect the trip with Hux?_

It’s as if Leia has read his mind. “Worried for our vacation plans, are you?” she teases him. She shakes her head. “For the time being, things look confined to the east. France has never liked Austria, you know that much; they won’t rush to avenge the insult that’s been done to them.”

“But would they fight with Russia?”

“They are their allies, yes, and Poincaré hates the Germans…but I doubt the French, or their coffers, want another war.” But Leia looks slightly concerned, now, where she’d been unaffected before. She frowns. “All the same, however, I wonder if it wouldn’t be prudent to postpone our trip, just in case. At the rate things are developing…”

Ben is crestfallen. “Must we? We’re not going until August. What if things get sorted out behind the scenes in the meantime, and nothing happens after all? It would be such a waste,” he hurries to try and convince her, aware he’s painted himself into a corner. He curses himself for asking about Russia. “Hux has already spoken to the curator of the house, they’ll be expecting us…”

But Leia, now persuaded, will not budge. “No, Ben. I know it’s not for a while yet, but anything could happen before August. I’ll have Luke write to Mr Huxley and ask him to put our stay on hold, or, if that can’t be managed, not to bother; he did want to have the house sold before summer’s end.”

Ben sighs, put-out. “Fine, then.” He hadn’t realised just how much he had been looking forward to the trip. As absurd as any of his other hopes for it were, he had been excited to see France… _and with Hux._ But now this is not to be. “I’m going upstairs.”

“Oh, Ben, don’t be angry,” Leia starts, but Ben stands and pushes back his chair with a loud scrape, cutting her off.

He tosses his napkin down on the table and crosses the foyer to go up the spiral stairs, stalking past the alarmed maid who is waxing the banister. He slams his bedroom door and sits down in a huff, feeling a deep resentment towards the Austrians, the Germans, the Russians, the French, and the bloody Bosnian rebels who started all this business in the first place. _Damn the Kaiser. Damn them all._

He wonders if Hux, in London, has heard the news already, and thinks to write to tell him — but then realises he’s being foolish. _He’ll have read it in the papers. And anyway, why would he want to hear from you? He’s busy with his debutante. They’re probably shopping for diamonds right now._

Ben sighs and pulls the book he’s been reading toward him. He doesn’t care for this Proust fellow, but figures that even the rambling and minutely-detailed account of his unnamed narrator’s French childhood can’t be worse than these never-ending visions of Hux sliding a ring onto the elegant finger of a beautiful girl. He opens _Swann’s Way_ and tries to lose himself, if only for a little while.

With luck, he thinks, he’ll read for days, and then Hux will be home again. Even if he brings a fiancée with him, it will be better than not having him here at all.

 

* * *

 

When Rey and Luke get home from town that afternoon, the house is quiet; Leia is upstairs in her study, and Ben has gone out sketching; Finn is in the library, poring intently over a work of Thomas Hardy’s. Cecil greets them at the door, sounding slightly exasperated and offended, as always: “Good afternoon, Master Luke. Miss Rey, you have a visitor.”

Rey pauses in removing her hat, her hands suspended as she reaches to unpin it. “Yes?” she asks, unable to keep a spark of excitement from her voice.

Luke, handing his coat and hat to Elsie, who has just appeared as if conjured, looks over too:

“Who is it, Cecil? Don’t keep us in suspense,” he says, his blue eyes twinkling knowingly.

“Young Mr Dameron, sir.” Cecil’s chest puffs out with self-importance: despite his initial bemoaning of the pressures of his now-dual role as butler and valet, he seems to be warming most thoroughly to his new position. “I showed him in to the library, where I should imagine Master Finn has been keeping him company.”

Rey’s face lights up at the sound of both their names. Quickly she hands Elsie her hat and purse, and, thanking Cecil over her shoulder, proceeds with a light quick step to the library. Her father watches her go, smiling fondly.

Rey pushes open the library doors carefully, wanting to stay quiet and surprise them. On the divan, she sees Finn and Poe sat next to one another, their knees angled together to touch, a book open between them and their dark handsome heads bent over it.

But their eyes are not on the book — rather, they are speaking together in hushed voices, Finn assuring Poe of something with a gentle touch on his knee. Rey watches them for a moment, deep affection welling in her chest, and then she calls, “Hello!” with a brilliant smile on her face.

At the sound of her voice they glance up in tandem, and flashes of surprise are quickly followed by smiles breaking across their faces.

Poe is the first to spring up and go to her, grinning his charming grin, his quick stride hardly containing his joy. He crosses the room and takes up her hand, kisses it ardently: “Rey!”

She laughs in delight and throws her arms around his neck as if it has been months and not days since they last met, kissing him on both his cheeks. “Hello, Poe!” Finn, too, has come over, and she goes to him next, holds his face between her hands and kisses him lightly on the lips. “Poe. Finn. My darling boys,” she says, beaming at them.

“How was mass? And your errands?” Finn asks, as together they go back to the big divan, Poe and Finn making room for Rey in between them. She sits with her ankles crossed, smoothing down her light skirt and sweeping back a stray lock of hair.

“Oh, scintillating, as always,” Rey says, not unkindly. “Papa and I saw the McMahons, and the Hammonds, too, at church, which was lovely; and we ran into Neville Aldridge and his wife Louise at the tailor’s, and took lunch with them when we’d finished. Papa’s had two new suits ordered, with my help in choosing, of course, and they’re so _handsome,_ you’ll hardly recognise him in them; and I got new hat-ribbons, I keep losing mine in the gardens. After lunch we stopped by the Pavas’, and their chauffeur gave us a lift, as it looked like it would rain; but it didn’t, after all…and how glad I am we came home anyway, so as not to keep you waiting!” Rey laughs at herself, realising of how little interest her day must be to them. “I don’t mean to bore you.”

“You aren’t!” Poe protests at once, his eyes warm. “We’d have waited hours to see you, and heard all the village gossip, too, if you wanted to tell it. But I _am_ glad you’re back sooner than later,” he adds boldly, and something in his tone makes Rey’s ears prick up.

“Yes? And why might that be?” she asks, lightly teasing.

“Well, you see — I haven’t _just_ come to discuss Hardy with Finn, or to hear about your father’s new suits — although they’re splendid, I’m sure,” Poe says, winking.

“Oh? If not, then why _have_ you come, Mister Dameron?” Rey banters back. She folds her hands in her lap and feels her heartbeat pick up, as if it knows something she doesn’t.

Poe and Finn exchange a glance: Finn gives Poe a minute nod. Rey looks back and forth between them, impatient, feeling herself grow breathless, _can it be, can it be what I think —_ “Well?” she demands, laughing. “Out with it!”

Poe smiles. Slowly, he gets off the sofa, and drops fluidly to one knee in front of her. His hand is already dipping into his breast-pocket. Rey gives a gasp. “Aurelia Skywalker,” he begins, his brown eyes full of warmth, “will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”

He draws out a small silken box. He opens the lid, and inside rests an antique gold ring, its single handsome diamond glinting softly in the light. Rey, her right hand pressed over her mouth, puts out the other, and Poe slides the ring gently onto her finger.

Rey is nodding, nodding, again and again, and then finally she takes her hand from her lips and says, _“Yes.”_

A grin spreads across Poe’s face, and at Rey’s side, Finn’s too. He watches as the one woman he loves stands from the divan, and throws herself into the arms of the one man he loves; watches as Rey laughs in disbelief and kisses Poe on the lips, as his strong arms squeeze her close; and then Finn smiles wider still, shyly, as they break apart and Rey beckons him over, tears of joy sparkling in her eyes: “Come, Finn, come here.” He is enfolded in their arms and they stand there together, all three. Finn closes his eyes and rests his head on Rey’s shoulder, smelling her scent of sunshine and sky.

When Poe had asked him, earlier today — his voice low, his eyes serious — for permission to propose to Rey, Finn had hesitated. He remembered his feeling, on the night of that very first ball, when they’d both met and been instantly enraptured by Poe, that one day he would take Rey from him; and now he has been proven right…in a sense.

What he could never have predicted, that night, were the months which would follow: this glorious golden summer, this summer of their love, the _three_ of theirs. He knows that marriage between two of them will not tear the three of them apart. What they have is _more,_ is far stronger than that.

“It makes sense,” he’d told Poe when he asked. “You’re a perfect match, in station, in family. As much…as much as I love her,” he’d said quietly, “love her and love you, I can’t have either one of you for true.” He spoke over the pained look in Poe’s eye at these words, the way he opened his mouth to protest; to back down from his proposal at once, Finn knew, if it would hurt him in any way. “So it should be you. I can’t think of anything better,” he’d said, in honesty and earnestness. “I mean it, Poe. You have my blessing.” He grinned his shy wide grin. “So long as you two don’t forget me.”

At this, Poe had put his hands to Finn’s face, just as Rey later would when she arrived. He’d leaned forward, kissed him gently, sending Finn’s head reeling just as it did every time, and said, “We won’t. We could never.” He’d squeezed Finn’s hand. “Thank you.”

“We’ll have to ask my father,” Rey says breathlessly, now, as they break apart from their embrace and she stands back, gazing down at the ring. “Seeing as I’m not of age. But I’m sure that he’ll say yes.”

“I hope so,” Poe replies. His eyes follow Rey’s to the ring. “It was my grandmother’s,” he tells her. “Argentinian gold.”

“It’s lovely,” she says with utmost sincerity, twisting her wrist so that the diamond catches the light. “Oh, Poe, I’m so _happy,”_ Rey says, looking up at them both, her eyes wide and full of love. “Was that what you two were conspiring about, then, just before I came in?” she asks, smiling devilishly: the thought has just occurred.

Poe nods. He looks at Finn: “I couldn’t ask unless I knew Finn would agree.”

Rey takes up Finn’s hand and kisses it. “It’ll be the same,” she promises him. “Always. I promise. We’ll still be us three, forever — oh, you’ll come on honeymoon with us, and when we find a place of our own you’ll come with us there, too!” She beams radiantly at him. “I’ll spend my whole life with both my loves by my side.”

Just then, the bell for tea rings. “Shall we tell Lady Leia?” Poe suggests.

Rey nods, and is about to run to the doors when she notices the ring still on her finger. “It should be a surprise,” she explains, slipping it off and into her pocket; and then she hurries to the doors with her boys trailing behind.

In the foyer they come across Ben, just returned from his wanderings: “Ben!” Rey exclaims when she sees him, going to her cousin and standing on tiptoes to hug him. Ben, who’d been wearing a faraway, cloudy expression, looks startled from a dream.

“What is it?” he asks dazedly, as Rey peppers his cheeks with kisses. “What’s happened?”

“Come,” Rey bids him mischievously — “Oh, hurry!” she implores, as he fumbles to remove his boots. “Come along!”

And so the four of them traipse into the parlour, where Elsie is setting out the tea-things and Leia sits in an armchair, stifling a yawn. “Hello, you lot,” she says when they come in — Rey bursting with energy, Poe and Finn unable to stop smiling, and Ben looking rather befuddled by it all. “What’s got you all abuzz?”

Rey opens her mouth to reply, hardly able to keep from bursting, waiting impatiently for her father to join them — but then there is a noise from the foyer, his step on the stairs. She goes to the parlour door and calls out, joyfully, to him: “Papa, hurry — come in for tea, quick!” She darts out the door, too impatient to wait.

Poe and Finn exchange a smile at her glee, and go to take their seats on opposite ends of the chesterfield. Leia looks inquisitively at Ben, who shrugs and sits down in the armchair next to hers. After a moment Rey comes hurrying back in, practically dragging her father by the sleeve: “Come, come, Papa, sit down!” she chivvies him, pressing a cup and saucer into his hand before flopping down next to Poe on the sofa.

Luke gives a laugh, amused: “What’s this, then, a family meeting?” — for they have not all been together for tea in some time, the most notable absence often Ben’s.

“Yes, of sorts,” Rey says. She waits until everyone has been served tea, but takes none of her own, nearly bouncing in her seat, and then, finally, she shoots Poe a significant look. Unseen by her, Leia follows her niece’s gaze, and all at once understands. She smiles.

“Mr Skywalker,” Poe begins, made nervous but not deterred by the crowd of expectant faces, “I’d like to ask you something.”

Luke raises his eyebrows. His eyes dart to his sister’s, and they exchange a knowing look. He smiles. “Yes, Poe?”

Poe takes a deep breath, and then says earnestly, “Well, sir — this afternoon I took a great leap of faith, and one of which I sincerely hope you’ll approve. This afternoon, sir, you see, I asked your lovely daughter to marry me.”

There is a brief silence in the room, as everyone absorbs his words — and then Luke says, “And what did she say?” His eyes are merry. “There’s no use asking _me,_ if Rey can’t be persuaded.”

“Oh, Papa, I said _yes,_ of course I did!” Rey bursts in crossly. “Don’t tease. And if you plan to say no, then know that I am _fully prepared_ to elope to Australia, and I’ll take Finn with me, too!”

Luke laughs out loud at this, and so does his sister; even Ben gives a surprised guffaw.

_“Australia,_ darling? That surely won’t be necessary,” Luke answers her. He smiles warmly at Poe. “I can think of nothing that would make me happier than to have you as part of the family, Poe. Of course you have my permission.” He turns laughing eyes on Rey again: “Australia for the honeymoon, then?”

_“Papa!”_ But she’s laughing, too, and pulling the ring from her pocket and pressing it into Poe’s hand so that he can slide it onto her finger again, and then again, as she pulls it off and insists that he do it again, “because Elsie wasn’t looking — come, Elsie, see the ring!”

And Leia hugs her niece, and Luke claps Poe on the back, and Ben comes over and shakes his hand and kisses Rey’s cheek, and Rey flits among them glowing with happiness, the ring sparkling on her finger.

“When shall we have the wedding, then?” Leia asks, ever practical.

“Well…if there’s going to be a war in Europe, then won’t Poe have to —” Rey begins, remembering this morning’s news, which the Aldridges had filled her and Luke in on over luncheon. Her brow wrinkles; she looks slightly deflated to be brought back to reality.

Poe interrupts her, waving his hand. “There’s a chance I’ll have to leave, but that doesn’t mean we should rush things.” He pulls Rey close and kisses her cheek. “We don’t even know if anything will happen, or if England will get involved,” he reminds her. “Plan whatever you’d like, and we’ll have it whenever you’d like. No war’s going to keep me from marrying you.”

Rey flushes, at this, and nestles closer into his side. “If you’re sure,” she murmurs, and looks to her aunt for approval.

“Well, it might be more prudent —” Leia starts, but Poe cuts her off, too:

“Lady Leia, I insist. We’ll be married at our house — my father built my mother a beautiful chapel for her wedding gift — and we’ll do it when Rey has planned the most perfect day she can think of, and no sooner. Spare no expense,” he tells his new fiancée, kissing the top of her head. “We’ll blow the county away. Should I invite the Prince of Wales?”

Rey laughs, clapping her hands in disbelief —  _she,_ an orphan from the streets of London, should perhaps have the Prince of _Wales_ at her wedding, and that wedding to the handsomest pilot in England, to boot! — and the matter seems settled. “A winter wedding,” she suggests, her eyes alight, “with the hoar-frost on the trees, and fur capelets for the bridesmaids — oh, I shall have to tell Jessica! — and your mother can play her piano for us, Poe, the wedding march…”

And now Luke calls for a bottle of champagne, and in the confusion of its being poured, Ben goes to Finn’s side and asks quietly, “Are you all right?”

Finn, his eyes on Poe’s face as he passes Rey a glass of wine and she kisses him, shyly, in thanks, is startled. “Yes,” he replies in the same low tone, still looking at them. “Yes, I am.”

“Truly?”

Finn nods. He is surprised by Ben’s noticing him, touched that he cares. He looks at him. “I am. Really.”

Ben nods, too. “I see you with her,” he explains awkwardly, his big hands twisting together. “I know that she loves you. We all know. And,” he lowers his voice still further, “I see you and Poe, too, and — well — you won’t lose them,” he blurts. His eyes will Finn to understand.

Finn looks at him, still more amazed. _I didn’t think he cared._ “I know,” he replies carefully, sensing that they do understand each other, in more ways than he would previously have imagined.

“I know that I,” Ben begins stiffly, “would be — would be…hurt, if a friend as — as dear to me as Poe is to you were to be married, and I could no longer be in his life…but you, Finn, you’re lucky. You won’t lose them,” he repeats. “You won’t lose him.” This last is quiet, almost to himself.

Finn smiles. “Thank you, Ben,” he says, and touches him gently on the arm.

The little impromptu party is in full swing around them: the phonograph has been brought out, and Rey’s put on her favourite record, swaying in Poe’s arms to Irving Berlin. Finn and Ben look out at them, and Rey must feel Finn’s gaze, for she looks up and calls over, “Finn! Come here, come dance with us!”

Luke spins his sister around, and Cecil exclaims when Elsie nearly knocks over the glass of champagne she’s trying to get out of the way, and Finn, smiling at Ben, ducks his head and goes off to join Rey and Poe in the dance. Ben watches the merriment for a moment more, but he’s distracted.

The happy scene depresses him. He’s thrilled for his cousin; he knew this was bound to happen, they all did, and he’s pleased to see all their wishes come to fruition. And he’s glad for Poe too; he likes him, and he can hardly think of a better match for Rey. Even Finn does not lose, this way, for Ben knows he is too dear to them both to ever be left behind, even in their married bliss.

_But if Hux is to marry…_

If things go as Hux’s father and the meddling Mrs Aloysius hope, in London this week, then it will be, Ben supposes, only a matter of time before he’s on the side-lines at another engagement party, dipping into the fruits of Huxley Hall’s cellars as he watches Hux spin some ethereal blonde on his arm.

_And what of me, then?_

Ben has no family connection to Hux, as does Finn to Rey; he is only a friend. There is no reason why he should continue to occupy such a place in Hux’s confidences as he does now: gone their daily trail rides, gone their afternoons in Ben’s room discussing Latin and poetry, gone the moments when they lapse into companionable silence and Ben lets himself drink in the sight of him, the fine bones of his face, the shocking red of his hair, and imagine how his creamy skin might warm beneath his hands; how it might feel to kiss those full, merciless lips; to open himself and take Hux inside, his fingers or his —

_Enough._ Ben shakes his head. He snags a flute of champagne from the table and escapes upstairs to the solitude of his bedroom and his drawing-pad, leaving his family in oblivious happiness. Rey’s joyful laugh floats high and trails him up the stairs.

 

* * *

 

It is another four days yet before Hux is home. With every day that passes — it has been more than a week now, Hux had said it should only be a week, it _can’t_ be a fortnight, Ben will go mad — he thinks to write, or send a telegram, but stops himself every time. _Why would he want to hear from you? Who are you, to beg him home?_ He is convinced that, by now, Hux and the fiancée are shopping for a trousseau, drawing up a wedding guest list on which Ben’s name does not appear. He does not see why it should be any other way.

But on Friday afternoon, the tenth, after Ben has spent a languid, miserable morning sweating in the garden, keeping score for Rey, Poe, and Finn’s endless game of croquet, Leia comes out with Elsie, bearing lemonade. Ben accepts a cool glass gratefully, drinking deep — and nearly chokes on it when Leia turns to him and says negligently, “By the way, Ben, I saw a cab at the Huxleys’ this morning, on my way into town. The driver was bringing their luggage inside; they must be home from London.”

Ben stands immediately from his uncomfortable wicker chair, shoving his glass, notebook, and pencil at Leia. She frowns down at the lazy, drowsy scrawl of numbers on the page — “What’s this?” — and he begs her, “Keep score!”, already half-jogging towards the house. He hears Rey and Poe calling after him, but he pays them no heed. He is entirely awake, now, feeling electrically charged.

He stops in the house to change his shirt and fix his hair, his hands so nervous that he nearly drops the comb, and then hops on his bicycle and is off like a shot, down the path, through the woods. Objections sneer through his brain, just as they always do —  _He won’t want to see you, he hasn’t missed you, what if he’s brought_ her _home with him? —_ but he pedals faster to silence them.

Huxley Hall is in a worse state than it was before they left. The lawn is growing fast and wild, and the ivy has begun to encroach upon the leaded window-panes. But Ben hardly notices any of this, as he tips his bike over onto the lawn and nearly races up to the front door, ringing the bell with urgency.

He waits, panting, for what seems an eternity — and then there is a noise from within, and the door opens, and Hux is there.

There is a breathless moment of suspension, the two of them looking at one another and saying nothing; and then Hux breaks it, and says, a smile stealing over his face, “Ben.”

Ben hardly knows what he is doing: they have never embraced before, but now he reaches out and pulls Hux to him. He hears a tiny intake of breath from Hux, but he does not pull away or shove Ben off him; instead, his arms come up, and he returns the hug. Ben smells his aftershave, the clean scent of his hair — feels him in his arms, the slim lithe strength of him — and thinks his knees will buckle where he stands.

They break apart too soon. “Hux,” Ben says weakly, balling his hands at his sides so he does not try to touch him again. “I — Welcome back.”

“Thank you,” Hux replies. He is overwhelmed with guilt and pleasure by this unexpected boon, the feeling of Ben’s warm solid body, those arms enfolding him. _Friends. Friends._ “How are you?”

“Well,” Ben says. “I’m well. Yes. How…how was London?”

He is peering behind Hux, subtly craning his neck to see into the house. Hux frowns, and glances over his shoulder: there is no-one there. “It was fine,” Hux answers, and Ben’s attention snaps back to him. “Won’t you come in? It’s so hot outside, the house is cooler.”

“Oh — yes.” _Surely he wouldn’t invite me in if she were also there, unless he thinks to introduce us._ Ben can’t tell which would be worse. But he follows Hux inside, through the foyer, down halls he recognises from their visit to the library, and then into a dining-room that must once have been grand. An electric chandelier hangs over the vast table, but its bulbs are dimmed, its glass pendants dusty. Only one place is set; a half-empty plate and a mug of tea on a saucer sit next to a pile of papers and books and a discarded pen, obviously abandoned by Hux just moments ago.

Quickly Hux goes to it and clears up the debris, stacking the papers, closing his ledger, moving the remains of his lunch to the sideboard. “Sit down,” he bids Ben, clearing away his now-cold cup of tea. “I’m sorry for the mess. I was working, as ever.” There’s a slight downward tug to his mouth: the estate business is never-ending, Hux trying valiantly to claw their finances out of the deep hole into which his father has drunk them.

“It’s all right,” Ben says. He takes a seat, still glancing surreptitiously about. There must not be other guests, if Hux is still working, as normal. But he can’t relax until he knows exactly what transpired on the trip. As Hux settles back into his seat, pushing aside the closed account book and sighing, Ben reopens their earlier conversation: “So what did you do, in London?”

Hux pushes a hand through his hair. “Attended plenty of meetings, all very serious in tone. My father’s investments in Austria are safe for the moment, but nothing seems very secure…which is, of course, just what we need right now.” He glances mutinously at the ledger, and then shrugs. “But my father _did,_ at least, make an effort to show up sober, and on time; and he did most of the talking instead of leaving it all to me. I was almost impressed,” Hux admits. “He was nearly his old self again.”

“That’s good,” Ben says, nodding. He doesn’t want to trivialise the clearly pressing matters in Hux’s life, but he’s also desperate for more _pertinent_ information. Awkwardly, he tries to steer the conversation further towards what he needs. “And…meetings aside? Did you have some fun, at least?”

Hux shrugs again. He thinks Ben is aiming for the subject of Mrs Aloysius and her scheming, though he can’t imagine why. “Not too much,” he says levelly. “As I thought, I was indeed introduced to a young woman, and lunched with her twice, as well as accompanying her to the cinema.” He stops there.

“What did you see?” Ben asks uselessly, preparing himself.

_“Mr Barnes of New York.”_

“I read the novel. Ages ago.” Ben clears his throat. “Did you like it? Did — she?”

“I thought it was all right,” Hux replies carefully. “Madeleine quite enjoyed it.”

“Madeleine,” Ben repeats, frowning. “I didn’t know that was her name. I thought it started with an L?”

“I had that wrong,” Hux admits, sheepish.

His memory had quite overinflated the pretentiousness of Miss Aloysius’ Christian name, and her person as well: _Madeleine_ had proved to be a sweet and funny girl, energetic and witty, quite like Ben’s own cousin Rey, in fact. Their chaperoned lunches had been made much less tedious by the amusing expressions Madeleine flashed him whenever her mother made a prim, insipid comment. Later, they had had a surprisingly enjoyable evening at the cinema, Theresa having been persuaded to sit two rows behind them; Madeleine had kept up a string of dry commentary in Hux’s ear that had him fighting to restrain his guffaws all throughout the film.

And, best of all, Madeleine had no interest in marrying him.

“What was she like?” Ben asks, as if having read his mind. “Did anything…was anything…arranged?” he forces out, deeply uncomfortable.

Hux represses the traitorous hope that arises, seeing the look on Ben’s face —  _why should he care so much…? —_ and answers, calmly, “No. Miss Aloysius is, in fact, quite in love with another man, one Mr Harry Bain of Sydenham — and, as it turned out, she enlisted my help in persuading her mother to let her marry him.”

Hux must be imagining the look of utter relief that washes over Ben’s face, for it is gone in a moment, as Ben — quite composed — replies, “Did it work?”

This is fantastic news, the best, too good to believe. Ben thinks of his days of torment, visions of diamond rings: how quickly they disappear, now, dissolve into harmless mist! _He isn’t marrying her. He isn’t marrying anyone. I’ll have him to myself again._ In his elation he cannot stop the greedy thoughts, nor does he want to.

“As a matter of fact, it did, yes,” Hux answers. “Madeleine succeeded in convincing Lady Theresa that just because her _own_ marriage was a love-match turned sour, hers was by no means guaranteed to turn out the same way. I met her young man, too, and they did seem very happy together. This morning, when we left, they were on their way to pick out a ring.”

Madeleine had kissed Hux’s cheek at the train station, beaming gratefully at him, her arm linked securely with Harry’s. The young man had pumped Hux’s hand and promised to toast him at the wedding, which Hux sincerely hopes he will be persuaded not to do after all. He doesn’t feel he did all that much — simply spoke at length of Harry’s virtues over luncheon, while making vague references to missing home for _particular reasons_ (this, at least, was not a lie).

But in the end, Theresa Aloysius had indeed abandoned her conviction that Hux was _the_ match for her only daughter, and although he does not know precisely why, he is glad that she did all the same.

“That’s wonderful,” Ben says, beaming, his spirits hugely bolstered. “When will the wedding be?” _The sooner the better, so the mother can’t change her mind,_ he thinks recklessly, selfishly.

“Quite soon, I expect, before the season is over,” Hux says, slightly confused by Ben’s enthusiasm. “Mrs Aloysius seemed rather in a hurry to get things tied up, once they’d been settled.” He clears his throat. “How’re you, then?” he asks, eager to get off the subject of marriage. “Any news from Millennium House?”

Hux’s wish is not to be granted. Ben looks surprised, and then answers, shaking his head at his own forgetfulness, “Oh — yes. Poe Dameron has proposed to Rey.”

“Really!” Hux is not surprised. “How wonderful for them — I assume, of course, she said yes,” he adds hastily.

Ben nods. “She did. They’re planning for a winter wedding; Rey doesn’t much care about the London season. Poe did talk of inviting the prince, though.”

He fills Hux in on what little has been planned so far, and Hux nods and comments in appropriate places, although the talk of weddings — flowers and suits and groomsmen and vows — makes him feel rather ill. He has always known that a wedding will not be what his future holds, nor does he want one; but the near-miss with Madeleine has brought the unpleasant possibility to the forefront of his mind. He can only hope that the lazier, drunker, and more disagreeable and isolated his father becomes with age, the less he will think about getting Hux married — and the reasons why he isn’t, yet.

Those reasons are quite distractingly incarnate in Ben, Hux thinks, watching him as he talks. He had spent their nights in London sharing a hotel room with his father, lying in his single bed and listening for Brendon’s snores — but even, when his breathing deepened, being too afraid to reach inside his drawers, close his eyes, and think sinfully of Ben, as he has been doing far too often at home, of late. Instead he’d lain awake, willing his urges to cool and leave him in peace again. He had not slept well all week.

“That sounds like it will be lovely.” Hux quickly pulls himself from his thoughts, noticing that Ben has stopped talking and is looking at him in slight, expectant confusion. “Yes. The wedding of the year, certainly. Do give them my congratulations. Ah — why, precisely, are they delaying until the winter, though?” he asks, the thought just having occurred. It can’t be a financial matter, and from what he has seen, Rey Skywalker and Poe Dameron are very definitely in love; he wonders why they’d wait.

“My mother asked the same thing,” Ben answers wryly. “It was Poe’s idea. Rey wanted to do things sooner, in case anything happens in Europe — you’ve heard the news? — but Poe insisted that she take her time and make it everything she’s ever imagined.”

“Sweet of him,” Hux says. The mention of Europe has distracted him: “But perhaps Rey was right to worry. The news from the continent isn’t looking good.” He picks up the newspaper he’d been reading earlier, and scans the front page: it mentions the knotty state of affairs between Austria and Serbia, which the addition of Germany and Russia has not helped to begin to resolve.

“Have you changed your mind since the assassination? Do you think this’ll bring on a war?” Ben wants to know.

He had noticed how Hux skirted the topic of marriage, how his eyes had glazed over when Ben described Rey’s wedding plans. This should not mean anything, should not ignite a spark of ludicrous hope in his belly — but it does. He forces himself to focus on Hux’s reply.

“Some kind of conflict does seem likely,” Hux admits, “whether in Ireland, as we thought, or between Austria and Serbia and their allies. But I still don’t think England will be drawn in. Why should we be?” he adds, when Ben doesn’t look convinced. “We’ve no close ties to the Austro-Hungarians or the Balkans, and the Irish have been fighting among themselves for centuries. Surely everything can be resolved without the whole continent peeping over their shoulders.”

“But you’ve agreed to postpone the trip to France all the same,” Ben reminds him. “So you must agree with my mother at least somewhat, that we’re right to be cautious.”

Hux winces. He wants to talk of war still less than he does marriage: he does not want to think of anything that might take him away again, away from Ben.

“To some degree, yes,” he says rather impatiently. “If it made your mother feel better to put the vacation on hold, then I was happy to oblige. It makes no difference to me whether we go this summer or later, when things have blown over — as I’m certain they will. Now. Might we speak of something else? My father and his associates spoke of nothing but the news, in London, and I’m sick of it.”

Ben looks taken aback, and Hux wonders belatedly if he has taken too harsh a tone. But Ben recovers, and says, “Yes, of course, if you want. Ah — what did you see in London? Where did you go? I’ve never been before, but I’d like very much to visit.”

“I’ll take you there someday,” Hux promises without thinking. “I lived there, I know the city well.” _Certain parts of it, at least._ “We could make up for missing out on France.”

He is rewarded with that dear crooked-toothed grin from Ben. “I’d love that,” Ben agrees readily. “Tell me about your favourite places,” he requests. “Where do you stay? What do you go see? I haven’t been to an art museum since we left New York, and I miss them.”

“There are plenty of museums in London. The V&A is my favourite.”

Happy to set aside all talk of love and war, Hux settles in to regale Ben with tales of all his favourite things to see and do and eat in London (leaving out those less-savoury pastimes that had occupied so much of his time when he lived there). In this way a very pleasant afternoon is spent, each of them delighting in the return of each other’s company far more than they can let on.

Finally, past tea-time, Hux answers Ben’s last eager question, and leans back, worn-out. “Will you stay for supper?” he offers, only now noticing that he has been growing hungry. “It won’t be anything much, I’m afraid, but you’re welcome to.” _I don’t want you to go._

Ben weighs his options — home, where the talk is of nothing but Rey and Poe’s wedding, and he knows himself to be a gloomy spectre in the corner; or here, to have Hux look at him when he speaks, laugh at the awkward jokes he tries to make; to be with him, near him, even if he cannot touch and be touched by him, as he so longs for. The choice is hardly a choice at all.

 “I’ll stay. Of course I’ll stay.”

Supper is simple and intimate — Hux’s father does not make an appearance, which comes as a relief to both of them, though they do not voice it. Hux brings out a good wine and they toast his safe return from London, Ben looking bashfully down at his plate as he suggests it. His mouth wrinkles as he swallows the strong red and Hux can hardly keep himself from taking him by the collar and kissing the wine from his lips.

They let dessert (stewed plums and cream, saved for a special occasion) drag on, talking idly and endlessly. Hux has a glass of cognac afterwards — Ben refuses, politely — and the liquor must make him brave, for when there is a lull in the conversation, Hux takes a deep breath and says,

“Can I ask, Ben — what happened to your face?”

Although he has heard a little of the story, he has always wondered if there was more. He had not felt confident asking before, but feels as though, today, things have changed between them. He hopes he is right.

Ben glances over, and touches the scar as if to shield it. “The accident. I thought you knew,” he answers, guarded, as he has not been with Hux for weeks now, and certainly not today.

Seeing the instant reversion to his old self-consciousness, Hux regrets his callous phrasing. “I’m sorry. That was boorish. I meant…what happened? In the accident?”

Despite its being the cause of Ben’s being here — in England, with him — Hux still knows very little of what happened to Ben, and his father, to send the Organa-Solos away. It has never come up in conversation, and even if it had, he understands that Ben would be reluctant to speak of it. But for some reason, he feels the need to know more: perhaps it will help him to better understand Ben, to come to know him truly.

“It was a car accident. Last winter. On the Brooklyn Bridge.” Ben is withdrawn, now, speaking in the clipped, awkward phrases that Hux has not heard from him since the very first days of their acquaintance. “That was how my father died.” He falls silent.

“Yes,” Hux says, hating to press but feeling insistent all the same. “I did know that. But…why did your family leave New York, after? Was there some reason you couldn’t stay without your father?”

He doesn’t want to imply that there were financial difficulties preventing them from staying — the money in Ben’s family, as Hux’s, comes from his mother’s side — although he, certainly, would not be one to judge them if there were; but he can’t imagine what else it might be.

Ben shakes his head, and then pauses, and then shakes his head again.  He is torn, desperately torn: he wants to tell Hux everything, to stop keeping secrets (or at least _these_ secrets) from him — but he is so afraid that if Hux knows the full truth, he will be repulsed by him; will see the taint and darkness that Ben knows cling to him, that he sees whenever he looks in the mirror, and will never speak to him again. _Why would he want to?_

“Not quite,” he says, reluctantly.

“Oh,” Hux says. “Was someone else was involved, then? Were charges brought?” he asks gently, feeling the pieces click into place.

But Ben shakes his head once more. “No. Not — no. But we still had to leave.” His words are choppy, disjointed. “You must think us cowards.” _Think me one,_ he means but cannot say.

“No,” Hux replies. “Of course not. I understand.” He thinks of his mother, of the house in Amiens. “When things get hard, when life becomes unbearable…sometimes we need to get away.” He looks at Ben. “To start again.”

“Yes,” Ben agrees quietly. He feels a weight slightly lifted, but not yet all the way. He wonders if he will ever be truly unburdened. “That’s what I want.”

“Has being here helped?” Hux asks. “A change of scenery?”

_That, and you._ Ben nods. “I like it here. I’m…happier. I feel like I could have a future again,” he confesses, feeling silly to say it aloud, blaming it on the strong wine. “After the accident, everything went…black. It seemed like I was stuck, and was going to be, forever. But it’s different now. It’s better.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Ben.” Hux’s voice is sincere. “I know just how you felt. Believe me.”

“How did you stop? What made things better again, for you?”

Hux shrugs, remembering the cold and awful years between his mother’s death and his escape, in the times when he had no choice but to be home from school: he and his father, locked-up in the empty house and within themselves, silent and wretched in a misery they should have but could not share.

“It took time,” he answers. “Mostly time. I was still in school, so that occupied me; and then finally I left home, and went to London and then Sandhurst. And Sandhurst helped the most.”

He remembers too how he had felt upon first arriving there, despite the unpleasant presence of the other Charterhouse boys — he felt like he’d come home. He’d relished the early mornings, the freezing showers, the hard, endless physical work, the unyielding discipline of his COs and instructors; he revelled in it all, knowing this was where he belonged and always had. He could feel his body hardening, his mind sharpening until there was no more room for grief.

(He had hoped, also, to leave no more space for certain other things; but they had proved themselves persistent, in the end.)

“The army,” Hux concludes. “Finding my purpose there. That’s what saved me.” He folds his hands, embarrassed by his own melodrama, but Ben seems to understand.

“Maybe Oxford will do that for me. Save me,” he says wistfully, but doesn’t sound much convinced. (And he isn’t: Oxford doesn’t need to do what Hux already has.)

“I hope it will.” Hux looks over at him. “You deserve to be happy.” On an impulse, he picks up Ben’s hand, resting on the table, and squeezes it; and then drops it again, for fear he will hold on too long.

Ben wishes he had kept hold. Hux’s touch sent waves of longing coursing through him: longing that he is equally powerless to resist or act upon. “Thank you. As do you.”

“I am happy, Ben. Here. With you.” Hux clears his throat, feeling Ben’s wide-eyed gaze. “Your friendship has come to mean a great deal to me, this summer. I haven’t… I haven’t had a friend in a long time.”

And this is true. Back in London, he had had a circle of acquaintances — drifters and layabouts, younger sons and failed businessmen, circling in and out of each other’s orbits without aim or care. He had, of course, also carried on certain liaisons. But none of these had lasted long or meant much; and after London, at Sandhurst, his relationships with his classmates had been founded wholly on competition. Their common interests extended as far as their chosen path, or at least that was as far as Hux had cared to pursue them.

He has not had anyone in whom to confide, with whom to share joys and sorrows, loves and fears, since his mother died and his father sent Rae away. And still he had never thought himself lonely — not, at least, until now; until Ben.

_A friend. He wants friendship. That’s all that this is._ At Hux’s words Ben feels guiltier still: Hux wants only that, as of course he should, as of course he does. _He is not like me. He doesn’t feel this way._ He has thanked Ben for his friendship, without knowing how dishonest Ben has been, how much he has kept from him; and yet, instead of confessing, Ben says only, “It means a lot to me, too.” _He’ll never know how much._

Hux smiles at him. The candlelight plays in his hair. Ben smiles back.

By now, they have finished their food and drink; the sky outside has bruised and darkened and they can decently linger no longer. Hux offers to walk Ben home, but Ben, blushing to the tips of his ears, waves him off. He has imposed on Hux’s kindness long enough, spent all day with him: an embarrassment of riches, and he dares accept no more.

They say goodnight at the door. It’s Hux who embraces Ben this time — quick, friendly, but an embrace nonetheless — and as he watches Ben leave, he wants nothing more than to call him back and take him in his arms again, never to let him go.

 

* * *

 

When he gets home that night — after bidding hasty hellos and goodnights to the family, hurrying up to his room to be alone and process the events of the day — Ben cannot sleep. The nights are hot now, sultry, oppressive, and the bedrooms have been trapping the heat all day, so that by the time he goes to bed — even after midnight, as tonight — he is far too hot to even think of sleep. It reminds him of those few miserable summers when they had stayed in New York City rather than gone away, because of Han’s business or Leia’s social engagements or anything else that kept them in town.

Tonight he has tried the usual remedies, forgoing pyjamas, a cold cloth on his forehead, the window thrown open to bring in some air; but the alarm clock on his night-stand has continued, merciless, to tick, and the night sky is full of stars, and still Ben is awake.

He tosses and turns in the too-big, lumpy bed. The mattress is ancient — an antique, like the rest of the furniture in his room — and he’s still not used to it, even after all these months. He lies on his back with his arms spread to the sides under the light coverlet. He would take that off, too, but he’s always had a childish dislike of sleeping without a blanket on: the fear that something would come out of the dark and grab him, his exposed feet or limbs. It’s foolish, he knows, and serving him ill at present. But he persists.

His thoughts have been twisting and turning all day. He is relieved beyond belief to have Hux home, and still unattached; he had not realised how deeply he had taken to heart the thought of him coming home engaged, nor how intensely he had dreaded and feared it. He had come to expect it as a given, a new and miserable circumstance to which he would have to adapt — but now nothing has come to pass, and he is greatly relieved. And then he had had all day with him: an unexpected blessing, and one that has provided him with much to think about, tonight — including the possibility of war, in which Hux seems to put more stock than he’ll let on.

Most likely, nothing will come of this Balkan business — as Hux keeps reminding him, it’s for the Austrians and Serbia to sort out among themselves —  _but what if they don’t?_ No matter Hux’s and Poe’s blithe confidence, Ben can’t shake the feeling that things will not turn out as they say. He doubts that Britain could ever become entangled in such a European affair; but if things don’t get resolved, and if, by some chance, tensions escalate and war is declared, would Hux, an English soldier, not, then, have to go?

_Enough. Don’t be foolish._ He turns over, onto his back now, and wills himself to think of something else. _You’re growing anxious over nothing._

Ben is sweating. He recalls, longingly, the last recent cool day, the morning he and Hux had gone shooting: the crisp fresh air out on the moor, how it had whipped his hair about. The sharp breeze had been distracting, had thrown off his concentration still further — he’s never been a good shot even in the best of conditions. But Hux had been unperturbed, raising his gun one-handed and firing off perfect shots every time, occasionally smoothing his hair back into place when the breeze endeavoured to beguile it away.

Ben shifts in bed. _Hux._ Before that day, shooting, Ben had never seen such a side of him: never seen him so truly in control as he was with the sleek and fearsome little revolver in his pale, fine-boned hand. He has always known that Hux is a soldier, and a good one, a proud one, at that; but some part of him had never truly understood it, until then. Until the pistol, like an extension of his body. His perfect shots would have been kills, had he not merely been aiming at the jars. _A creature’s heart. A man’s._

Ben shivers. He had wanted him, like that. He had wanted him fiercely, in a way that made him afraid. When he was watching him, it had taken all his will not to wrest the gun from his hand and bring those fingers to his lips instead. They would have tasted of gunpowder and steel.

It’s hot. Beneath the covers, within his too-warm woollen drawers, Ben’s cock stirs. Slowly, without decided intent, he brings his left hand to his mouth, and traces fingers over his lips. He can feel sweat on his fingertips and it does not bother him. He slips one digit into his mouth.

His tongue is wet, muscular underneath the pad of his index, undulating and curving around it. The inside of his mouth is warm. He sucks, lightly, on the finger, tasting salt, and then withdraws it: when it leaves his mouth the sound is like a kiss. He slips it back inside, and adds a second. He closes his eyes. He thinks of Hux and his Webley, his finger on the trigger.

With his other hand he reaches for his drawers. He pulls them down and kicks them off, so he is nude under the covers; already he feels more comfortable; he should have been sleeping like this all along. He takes his cock in hand. It is swelling, near-hard, and he strokes it languidly. He dips his thumb in the bead of clear fluid at the tip and circles it over the sensitive head. He gives a hum, low in his throat, shifting, spreading his legs.

With his eyes closed it is easy. He wraps his fist around his cock, and moves it up and down the shaft, and in the dark it is so easy to imagine his own fingers Hux’s, to think of him with one hand on Ben’s cock and the other in his mouth, keeping him quiet. He can’t, though — at the very thought he moans, softly, feeling it around his fingers. Hux bare-skinned and lithe and beautiful. Hux touching him, his eyes innocent, his hands wicked. Hux beside him, atop him, inside him.

Ben shivers, shivers. Another low groan escapes him. His cock strains in his hand. He opens his eyes and takes his fingers from his mouth: he cannot see but rather feels that they are slick and wet. He does not know what he is doing or why; his thoughts have been set free. He brings his hand down between his legs, behind his cock and testicles, and teases at the skin there near his opening, nearly jumping at the touch. His heart is thudding, reckless now.

It’s _hot._ Ben is seized with it. He throws off the covers with violence, kicking them away, and bends his knees and spreads his legs atop them. The summer air is warm on his skin, and a sweet-smelling breeze floats through the open window, curling around him. His right hand moves faster on his cock, and the slick fingers of his left probe gently, gently, applying pressure to that tight ring of muscle that has never been breached before. The feeling is dirty, dangerous somehow —  _this is not normal, this is not sane_. His thoughts spill over, twist, contort, and he sees Hux kneeling between his legs. Ben’s mouth opens, his brows draw together as he inserts the tip of one finger inside himself, inhaling sharply as he does.

He is exposed, spread wide. His door is unlocked: anyone could come in and see him like this, naked, debased, his hand moving frantic on his aching cock, one finger inside of that filthiest place. Ben’s head rolls back on his neck and he moans, loud, unable to hold back any longer. He cannot recall ever being more aroused.

He squeezes his eyes tight shut and lets his fantasies overtake him: Hux, cool-eyed and proud-lipped in the moonlight, telling Ben how unworthy he is, how obscene, even as he buries himself inside him. Hux kissing him like a demon, a fiend, as if to possess him. _Mine,_ Ben imagines him saying, in a voice that is not Hux’s and yet is. _You’re mine, aren’t you? You would do anything for me._

“Yes,” Ben breathes aloud, writhing, straining under his own touch. He pushes his finger deeper inside and gasps at the feeling. “Yes, Hux, please, oh God —”

His hips lift off the bed, arch, and then he sets them down and lifts his legs high into the air, imagines throwing them over Hux’s shoulders as he fucks him. The altered angle makes his head spin: the feeling of being taken so completely, at another’s mercy even though he is alone. His breathing is ragged and shallow, he is whispering Hux’s name, and a frenzy is building inside of him as he clenches around himself and moves, moves, fucks his hand fiercely. The night air whispers over his hot, naked skin.

He is close. Sounds are escaping his throat, now, desperate pants and whines. The house is asleep, he no longer cares – but the window is open. As his climax approaches, Ben imagines the sounds of his pleasure being carried on that summer wind, across their estate, through the bordering woods, and right into Hux’s bedroom. He gasps aloud.

_“Hux,”_ he moans, loud, unashamed, “oh, Hux, yes —  _Hux_  —”

And he comes, half-sobbing with his release, his body overcome with the force of his climax. He gasps and pants as spend streams from his cock, spilling over his hand, and behind his eyes he sees Hux smiling.

When the aftershocks subside, Ben lies back. He is exhausted: he is exhilarated. His body is ringing. He knows he should feel shame for what he has done, what he has thought — but he does not. He has reached a breaking-point and he no longer cares.

_I wish he could have heard me. I wish that he did._

Dazed, he reaches to the bedside table for his discarded flannel, and cleans himself with it, feeling it cold and wet on his skin. He tosses it aside and pulls the blanket over his body again. The night has cooled.

He sleeps deeply, sated, and the wind whispers and laughs through his dreams.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com).


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

 

On Sunday, instead of going out for their usual walk after church, Poe, Rey, and Finn sit down with Luke and Leia in the dining-room to begin planning the wedding in earnest. Ben, poking his head in on his way out the door to meet Hux for a ride, takes one look at the mass of fabric swatches, dressmakers’ and florists’ catalogues, invitation samples, and address-books spread out over the long table, and comments, “I thought you were planning a wedding, not a military operation.”

Rey swats good-naturedly at him with a magazine open to the latest dress styles from Paris as he passes by her chair, and Ben laughs and ducks out of the way. “Goodbye, all,” he bids them, heading out the door. “I don’t know when I’ll be home. Good luck!”

Leia watches her son go. She’s rarely seen him in such high spirits, and is still surprised that it should be his friendship with Brendon Huxley the younger, of all people, to put him in them. She doesn’t know the earl’s son well, but he has always seemed cold and distant to her — polite, certainly, and well-bred, but prickly. Evidently Ben has braved the thorns and found something softer beneath; _and if Huxley makes him smile again, that should be enough for me._

“We’ll have Reg Antilles up from London, won’t we, Papa?” Rey asks, bringing Leia’s attention back to the task at hand — namely, drawing up the first draft of a guest list. Poe is busy scribbling down the names and addresses of all his parents’ friends, and Rey and Luke are poring through their multitude of address-books to do the same. Finn, having the neatest handwriting, has been enlisted to compile the results into a concise and legible list, to be submitted to Leia for final review. It’s a very efficient (and, indeed, rather militaristic) system.

“Of course,” Luke answers his daughter, distracted. “I’ll write to his wife ahead of time to make certain they’re in town. It wouldn’t do for them to miss it; they’ve known you all your life.”

Leia looks up, at this, and shoots an alarmed glance at Luke, who almost immediately opens his mouth to correct himself. But Rey hasn’t noticed a thing; she’s running her finger down a page of names, entirely absorbed. “I hardly know half these people,” she confesses, laughing. “Papa, you have too many friends.”

“So do my parents,” Poe cuts in, shaking his head fondly. He holds up the list he’s drawn up from memory: there are easily fifty names crammed onto the page in his exuberant, looping hand. “The chapel’s big, but we’ll be hard-pressed to fit them all.”

“Oh, well,” Rey says, unperturbed. “What if we didn’t invite _everyone?_ Only a small party, the people we really want — like Reg and Vera, of course, and your godparents and their children, Poe — and Leia, did you say your friend Leonard could make it from America?”

“Leo has always been unreliable, but if we give him enough notice, he might grace us with his presence,” Leia replies. “Speaking of which, have you settled on a date yet?”

This last goes unheard. “Oh!” Rey exclaims, peering at a dress pattern and apparently struck with inspiration. “I was scavenging about in the attic the other morning, and I came across the most beautiful old hair-comb that looks just like the beading on this dress. It was hard to find, though, and I can’t recall where I left it; Finn, darling, won’t you come with me and look for it?”

The two of them rise and hurry off to the attic. Leia sees an opportunity, and waits until they are out of earshot to ask, casually, again, “Poe, have you two decided firmly on a date?”

“No, ma’am,” Poe replies, pulling Rey’s list toward him to begin narrowing it down and transcribing it in Finn’s absence. “We’re set on the winter, but beyond that, we’re not yet sure. January, February, maybe, so as not to interfere with Christmas.”

“Would you consider moving it any earlier?”

Luke and Poe both look up. Poe frowns, and then replies, in his usual easy tone, “Well, no, ma’am; I do think Rey has her heart set on the winter. Why do you ask? Is it because of the news?”

Leia nods. She hates to badger them again, as she had the day Poe proposed, but the worries have not left her mind since then. The news from Europe grows less promising each day, the possibility of a diplomatic resolution seeming ever more unattainable. She hates to think of a war breaking out and Poe going away, leaving Rey engaged, alone, and uncertain.

“I just think it might be a sensible precaution,” she tells him. “Why wait?”

“I want this wedding to be perfect for Rey.” Poe’s face is sweet and eager. He sets down the list and looks Leia directly in the eye, smiling. “If she wants the winter, then I’ll give her the winter, even if I have to make it snow myself. I’ll take my plane out and fly a cloud in from the Arctic, if that’s what it takes.”

“And if there is a war?” Leia respects his devotion, and knows that he is sincere, as only young men who are head-over-heels in love can be. But men in that state can be blind, too, and she feels she must lift the scales from his eyes, if only briefly. “If you have to go away?”

“We’ll cross that bridge _if_ we come to it,” Poe replies, totally unconcerned. “I’ve been keeping up with the papers, I know things aren’t looking good; but I believe in the essential goodness of man, and I believe that Austria and Serbia will find a solution that doesn’t bring the continent to war. I’m sure of it, ma’am.” He shrugs. “Besides — if war does break out, I’ll go as a pilot; and RFC men can’t be married.”

“Oh.” This new information puts a rather pragmatic halt to the slew of counter-arguments Leia had been preparing. She knows that flying is the other love of Poe Dameron’s life, and she can hardly ask him to give it up, on the off-chance of a conflict in which he may not even have to fight. She sighs, knowing when to admit defeat. “Well, I suppose that settles it, then. A winter wedding it’ll be. Just — do try and choose a date, soon, so we can arrange for a priest and find a printer for the invitations.”

“Of course, Lady Leia.” Poe smiles at her and goes back to his lists.

As if on cue, Rey and Finn make their return, chatting animatedly. Rey has something glittering in her hand, and when she sets it down, triumphant, on the table, it is revealed to be a finely-wrought hair-comb, surely Victorian or older. “Look, Aunt Leia,” she entreats her excitedly, pointing at fashion-plate of a wedding dress whose beading patterns do, indeed, echo the curlicues of the comb. “Isn’t that lovely? How uncanny!”

But Leia is slow to reply. She looks over at her brother, whose face has gone still; his hands are frozen on the catalogue he had been leafing through, looking for groomsmen’s suits. The siblings have both recognised the hair-ornament.

“It’s beautiful, Rey,” Leia says after a moment, smiling hesitantly at her niece. “Is that the dress, then, do you think?”

“Oh, I can’t be sure — there are so many, really, but they’re so _big,_ and really I’d prefer something simpler — not too fussy, you know — it’ll be easier once we’ve found a dressmaker, to offer a professional opinion…” She carries on, bending her head, with Finn and Poe’s, over the catalogue again, and asking their thoughts on each dress. They give them seriously, Poe’s fingers cupping his chin in concentration.

With the young folk distracted, Leia leans over to her twin and gently touches his arm. “It was hers, wasn’t it?” she asks softly, her face sympathetic.

Luke glances at her, his eyes glazed with memory. He nods. “I forgot we even still had it. I kept it, of course — it was her favourite — but I lost track of it, after…” His face is pained. “It’s right that Rey should wear it. I’d love nothing more. But all the same —”

He rises, abruptly, his hands pressed flat on the table-top. “I need a rest from wedding talk,” he announces, as jovial as ever. Rey looks up, concerned:

“But we’ve only just started!”

“And you’ll carry on just fine without me.” Luke smiles, and only Leia sees the tiredness that now shadows his face. He kisses the top of Rey’s head as he passes, his hand lingering briefly to stroke her hair. “I’m going to take a walk. Clear my head,” he says, more to Leia than anyone, and she nods her understanding.

There is one person, Leia reflects as Finn hands her the first clean, much-shortened draft of the guest list, who will not be attending. No matter how many address-books and society connections they can muster between the lot of them, one woman remains beyond their reach, and will forever; and even the Prince of Wales cannot replace Rey’s mother at her wedding.

 

* * *

 

After a long morning of wedding work, Poe pushes back his chair and announces, “I think we’ve made a very good start. Lunch, anyone?”

“I’ll call Cora, she can whip something up,” Leia says wearily. She takes off her spectacles and rubs the bridge of her nose: she’s _certain_ that when she and Han got married, things weren’t half this complicated. In all the bustle, she’s completely forgotten to plan lunch with the cook.

“Oh, no, Lady Leia, don’t bother,” Poe assures her. “I brought the car, you know. Why don’t we go for a spin into town, all of us?”

Rey exclaims in delight, and Finn looks up with great interest from his book (snuck in among the magazines). “I’d love to!” Rey enthuses. “Aunt Leia, won’t you come?”

Leia winces. Since Han’s death she has had a horror of automobiles, and avoids them whenever she can. She shakes her head, and refuses politely: “No, thank you. You three can go on ahead; Luke and I will stay behind and eat something here.”

After his walk, Luke had not returned to the dining-room, and his absence, thankfully, hadn’t been noted by the bride-to-be. Leia suspects he has disappeared up to his study, where the old photo-albums are kept. She’ll go up and see if he is all right, if perhaps he won’t take some food or some tea and maybe talk to her, get out of his own head.

“Are you certain?” Rey is excited, but the concern in her voice is genuine: she hates to leave anybody out of the fun.

“There’s room in the car,” Poe adds. “I won’t go too fast.”

“No, no, that’s quite all right,” Leia assures him. “You’ll have more fun without me, I daresay. Drive safely, Poe.”

“I will, ma’am,” he promises, smiling, as the three of them stand and prepare to go, all buzzing with excitement. Rey races out to fetch her shoes and hat, followed quickly by Finn. Poe dips a bow to Leia and then darts out after them: “Wait up, you two! You won’t get too far without me!”

“Hurry up, then!” Rey is halfway out the door, nearly dancing with excitement. “I _love_ car rides. Are you a good driver, Poe?” she asks, linking arms with the two of them as they proceed to the Aston Martin, parked in the shade, polished fenders reflecting the sunlight splendidly.

_“Very_ good,” Poe tells her proudly. “I love this car; the weather’s finally nice enough to bring her out from storage. We’ll have some lovely summer drives.” He opens the passenger door and Rey hops in, beaming; Finn swings over the side into the backseat.

“Could you teach me to drive it, do you think?” Rey asks, over the noise of the engine revving as Poe slams the door and turns the engine over.

“Well, I should think so,” Poe answers, looking over his shoulder as he reverses, and catching Finn’s eye and giving him a wink as he does. “Would your father approve?”

“Oh, yes,” Rey says blithely. “Although Aunt Leia perhaps wouldn’t, not after — well. I’m sure Papa would let me learn to drive. It could be terribly useful, you know.”

“One never knows,” Poe agrees. “What about you, Finn? Would you like to learn?”

_“Yes,”_ Finn answers without hesitation, leaning forward from the back. “Very much. I’ve always wanted to.”

“It’s settled, then!” Rey grins. “You’ll teach us both. Could we start today?”

“I don’t see why not.” Poe accelerates, and they zoom down the drive toward the flung-open gates, kicking up gravel beneath the tires. The air ahead shimmers with heat, and Rey gives a laugh of delight as they speed out onto the main road, dipping down the hill toward town. “After lunch, then?”

“It’s decided.” Rey sighs happily, leaning back in her seat. She reaches behind her head to clasp Finn’s hand; he catches it, and squeezes, and smiles.

They eat lunch in town and then return to the car. Rey wants to jump in right away, but Poe tells her that they should drive out somewhere quiet, where there’ll be less chance of meeting anyone on the road, “So you can go as fast as you like.” Reluctantly she agrees, and even lets Finn swap with her and sit up front so he can enjoy the ride even more.

Poe takes them speeding over the hills until they find a secluded spot out on the moors, with a straight stretch of dirt road that shouldn’t be difficult to navigate. He opens his door and bows gallantly, ushering Rey into the driver’s seat; Finn clambers again into the back and Poe takes the passenger side so as to instruct her.

She takes to it quickly — Poe has barely told her, “All right, now, ease off the clutch at the same time as you give it gas,” before she has done this perfectly and sent them zooming forward down the road. She gives a whoop of surprise and delight, both hands gripping the steering wheel.

While Poe had at first looked alarmed by the sudden start, his face relaxes and he gives a huge, exuberant laugh of pride. “That’s our girl!” he calls over the roar of the engine, glancing back at Finn and grinning. “We’ll make a race-car driver out of you yet!”

They go back and forth the stretch of road a few times, Poe’s instructions barely necessary, and then Rey says, “Can’t we go somewhere more _fun?”_

“Why don’t we give Finn a chance at the wheel, first? Another day,” Poe promises, “we’ll go anywhere you like, provided your Aunt Leia doesn’t see.” He winks.

“All right, then. Come, Finn, it’s such fun!” And they switch places.

Finn is not so reckless a driver as Rey — he goes rather slower than she had, and the last bit of tension eases from Poe’s face — but he still enjoys himself immensely, and it shows. He soon feels confident enough to reach over and wrap his arm around Poe’s shoulder while he drives, planting an impulsive kiss on his hair: “Thank you!” Finn tells him, returning his hand to the wheel. “This is the most fun I’ve had in years.”

Finally, their carousing comes to an end when Poe glances at the gas-gauge and decides that they should stop for now, to ensure he’ll be able to drive home. Finn gives up the wheel with great reluctance, and Poe motors them back to Millennium House, whistling ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’ as he does.

They pull up the drive and park back in front of the house. In the backseat, Rey stretches and sighs with contentment: “What a lovely day, Poe.” He helps her out of the back, and she shimmies neatly over the edge of the car, mindless of her skirt. Alighting, she kisses his cheek, and then frowns and says, “I’d best go in and check on Papa; he seemed rather off, this morning, didn’t you think?”

“Rather,” Finn agrees.

“I’m sure he’s all right, but just to be certain. Will you come in?” she asks them both.

Poe glances at Finn. “Well,” he says, “I’m not quite ready to go back inside, I don’t think. Finn, would you care for a walk?”

“Yes,” Finn answers, without hesitation.

Rey smiles at them both, giving them her blessing. “Have a lovely time,” she tells them, and kisses each of their cheeks before turning back to the house alone, little tendrils of hair floating out from her braids in the breeze.

They watch her go, each unable to take their eyes from her; and then Poe turns to Finn, and says, “Shall we?”

When they are out of sight of the house, Poe takes Finn’s hand, and they walk along that way, in perfect, contented silence. “Hello,” Poe says, after a little while. “I’ve missed you, you know.”

They have seen each other nearly every day, what with Poe being so often at the house to help with the wedding plans; but Finn knows exactly what he means. “I’ve missed you, too.”

“I am sorry,” Poe confesses, unexpectedly.

Finn frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I…I haven’t made time for you. For us, alone. Rey and I have been so caught-up, and even when I’ve come to visit her, after hours — it’s dangerous enough to chance being caught in her room before we’re married. You can hardly imagine how much I wanted to see you, too — to be with you; but the risks…” Poe sighs, looking genuinely torn.

“I know,” Finn says. “I understand.”

It is something of a relief, to hear Poe address it, the strange separation Finn has been feeling from the two of them. Since they got engaged he had been expecting, pessimistically, something of the sort, despite their promises; but all the same, now that it is happening, it saddens him. So knowing that Poe feels the same way — feels that this isn’t right, not quite — is a solace, of sorts.

But still he does not feel that the matter has been entirely resolved. After a moment:

“I know that we can’t be…open,” Finn says, tentatively. “About the three of us — what we have — or what you and I do. And it’s selfish of me to say, Poe, I know it is; but sometimes, seeing you and her…” He breaks off, feeling foolish now he has said it aloud. _Of course things cannot be any other way._

But Poe does not look offended, or angry; if anything, his face is sad. “I know, Finn,” he says, and his voice is low and full of passion. “I know. I _wish_ I could kiss you in public like I do Rey; I wish I could spend the night with you, or we all three could together. We can’t, for right now — but when we’re married, things will be different. We’ll tour Europe on our honeymoon, and you’ll come with us; and then we’ll set up in a place of our own, and you’ll be with us still. And with no-one to judge us, we’ll live as we like. _Soon,_ Finn. Only a little while longer.”

“But the wedding,” Finn protests, hating to press but feeling that he needs, at last, to speak. “It’s not for months yet. And if there is a war —”

“If there is a war, I’ll enlist as a pilot,” Poe cuts him off firmly. “You know I will. I’ll be expected to: that’s how I was trained. And RFC men must be bachelors; there’s no way around the rule.”

“I know.” Finn sighs. “But if there isn’t a war? If things calm down again in Europe, will you move the wedding sooner?”

“I suppose we very well might,” Poe concedes. “If Rey is all right with it. But, really…I don’t think the situation will turn itself around any time soon.” His brow furrows; he bites his lip.

“You’re certain of war.” It’s not a question. Finn feels a dawning dread. For the first time, it crosses his mind: what if he has to go, too? What if they must both leave Rey behind?

Poe nods, resignedly. “It seems more and more likely every day. Can’t you feel it?”

“Yes,” Finn admits. He has been reading the papers: the news grows ever grimmer. But he does not want to speak of war, not here, not now, when he finally has Poe alone, away from prying eyes. He stops Poe, catches up his wrist, and implores him, “But nothing’s happened yet. Let’s make the most of right now, and stop worrying about what might happen tomorrow.”

Poe’s pensive countenance transforms at once into his warm and open smile. “Yes,” he agrees immediately. “Let’s.” Lacing his fingers through Finn’s, he draws him off the path and into the shade of some trees.

When he sits down, Finn follows, his heartbeat thumping in anticipation. It has been so long since he has touched Poe, or been touched by anyone; since the engagement even Rey must be more careful, must not lavish affection upon a man besides her future husband. At night, alone, Finn has longed for them both, and now finally he will be gratified. Poe stretches himself out on the grass and reaches for Finn, smiling.

Finn goes to him eagerly. Their mouths come together with sweet excitement, the thrill of a reunion. Poe kisses with passion, the stubble of his afternoon beard gently rough against Finn’s face, his tongue slipping nimbly between Finn’s parted lips. They hold one another, limbs tangling, and kiss languorously, smiling against each other’s mouths. Finn is blissful. _What I’ve been waiting for._

There is still more to come. When, as they kiss, Finn can feel them both responding, he reaches down, for the first time, to the place between Poe’s legs where Finn’s own excitement is mirrored. Instead of pulling away or telling him to be careful — they are outdoors, after all, even if the wood is secluded — Poe instead smiles, and helps him to unbutton his flies. He returns the favour with Finn’s own.

“Can I — touch you?” Finn asks, half-breathless. How long has he dreamed of this, and now he hardly knows what to do.

“Please,” Poe answers him, and exhales, eyes closing in bliss, as Finn wraps his hand around his hardness. Poe moves his own hand, shifting his hips, and now their two hands are wrapped around the both of them. Finn hums, low, feeling the warmth and stiffness where they are pressed together.

Together, they begin to move, strokes of their hands coupling with shallow, gentle thrusts of their hips. Their breathing matches, open-mouthed, and Finn cannot keep his other hand from coming up to stroke Poe’s face, tangle in his hair. He cannot get enough of him, of his body, the feeling of him. And Poe seems likewise ardent: his free hand cups Finn’s buttocks, his teeth tug at his lower lip until Finn moans.

“I want you,” Poe murmurs against his mouth, his hand still moving, strong and sure, between their legs. “Properly. Alone, and in a bed, where I can fall asleep holding you.” He punctuates his wish with a kiss that leaves Finn breathless.

“One day,” he replies, moving closer to him, til their bodies practically meld into one, so closely are they entwined. “One day, we’ll have that — we’ll find somewhere just for us —  _ah,”_ he gasps, as Poe’s thumb strokes over the head of his cock and sends a sweet shiver all through him.

“And Rey. Us three. I want everything with you.” Poe buries his face in Finn’s neck, kissing, mouthing at his clavicle, the bursts of his hips growing shorter and sharper, his hand moving faster and faster — and Finn’s answering “Yes, yes, yes,” turns into a wordless breath as they come, together, clutching each other.

After, they lie back, breathe. Finn is blindingly happy: his body feels made of light, he feels renewed. He looks over at Poe, and smiles, and Poe smiles back, his eyes half-lidded with contentment. He reaches out; their fingers entwine.

“One day,” Poe promises.

Finn nods. Poe is a man of his word. “One day.”

 

* * *

 

Poe leaves them, after he and Finn have walked back to the house. Rey comes down to say goodbye, and when she does, he whispers, “Tonight?” in her ear. Rey pulls back, and nods, and smiles.

And now, tonight, she has waited up all night for him, and his knock has come at her door. He has slipped into her room and taken her in his arms; and they are in her bed, undressed, revelling in one another.

Poe kisses her mouth, her neck, her breasts, and then moves down her stomach, as she likes. She gasps and arches as his lips move, gentle, between her legs, and she opens them for him and moans in quiet bliss. He sets to work with his tongue, sending shivers all through her. After a few moments, she is wet and trembling, her hands working in his hair even as she murmurs his name, again and again. He brings her close, closer, and then lets her go again; Rey is breathless with the nearness of her pleasure, and begs him, “More.”

But Poe pulls back, now, and moves up the bed to kiss her. His hand comes up to stroke her nape, cup her head in his palm. As they kiss, she reaches between them, and takes him in her hand; he sighs, and puts his own hand over hers to guide her strokes. After a moment, though, he stills their hands, and says, “Rey.”

“What is it?”

His eyes are dark in the dim light cast by the half-burned candle on her table. “I’ve been to the barber,” Poe says, softly. “I got a pack of sixpennies from him. We could use one, if you like.”

“French letters, do you mean?” Rey’s eyes widen. She had not thought these would be so simple to obtain: she had imagined, regretfully, having to save that final act until their wedding night.

Poe nods. “Do you want to?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.” Rey kisses him again, her heart beating.

Poe smiles, and gets up and goes to his jacket, discarded in the corner. From the breast pocket he draws the little package, rips it open with care; he turns away from Rey, then, to extract its contents and put them on. Then he comes back to bed and tells her, “Come here”; and she goes eagerly into his arms.

They kiss, again, until they are breathing hard, their blood running hot. And then Poe asks Rey, “Are you ready?”, and she tells him, “Yes”.

He lifts her onto his lap, and enters her for the first time.

She gasps, by instinct: it is painful, though not nearly as much so as she would have thought. She has had Poe’s fingers inside of her, she supposes this helps; but there is still a stretch, an unfamiliar widening. But she settles around him, and he holds her close, and the stretch becomes pleasant, even exciting.

Poe is watching her carefully. “You’re all right, my love? It doesn’t hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she tells him. “Kiss me.”

He does, and shifts inside her as he moves; she gasps. She moves in his lap to wrap her legs around his waist, and a bolt of pleasure courses through her: Poe, too, gives an answering exhale, heavy and low. They move together, slow and exploratory, and Rey laces her hands around Poe’s neck, and he kisses her breasts and moves fingers between her legs. She throws back her head and gives a soft moan.

When she comes, he soon follows, and they shudder together. Afterwards, he withdraws himself, and disposes of the sheath; she lies back on the pillows, feeling a tenderness between her legs. Poe comes back to bed and asks her, “Did you like that?”

“Yes,” she answers, definitively. She reaches for him, pulls him into a kiss. “I wish that you could stay.”

“Soon,” he tells her, just as he’d told Finn. “Soon, my love. Soon I’ll never have to leave you; we’ll spend every night together.”

Neither of them will speak of war, that looming spectre. Instead, Rey smiles, her eyes already growing heavy — “We will, I know we will” — and feels one last kiss upon her lips, before she drifts into peaceful sleep and Poe slips out the door.

 

* * *

 

Another week passes, full of lessons with Hux for Ben, and wedding plans for the rest of the house. (One morning, as promised, Poe, Rey, and Finn drive down to Weybridge, and Poe takes them up in his Sopwith three-seater, and that gives the family a respite from wedding-talk: for the next few days, Rey and Finn speak of nothing else but flying.) Everywhere is a whirl of activity, and everyone is happy; the weather has cleared, the sun blazes brightly with no trace of storms. Even the news from Europe seems to have lulled and calmed: perhaps peace will endure after all.

On Saturday, the eighteenth of July, Ben stops by Huxley Hall after breakfast to invite Hux out for a ride. It has been too long since they’ve done anything but have their lessons, and Ben yearns to spend time with him unhindered by Latin verbs or the works of Chaucer. He knocks at the door and waits, and soon enough there is Hux, blinking owlishly in the sunlight, his mouth bowing into a surprised smile when he sees who it is.

“Ben!” he greets him, shading his eyes with one hand. “Did we have another lesson planned today? I’m sorry, I’ve been writing letters all morning, I’ve completely lost track of the time —”

“No, no, it’s all right,” Ben hurries to cut him off, smiling. “I only wanted to see if you’d care to go for a ride. It’s been some time since we’ve been out.”

Hux looks utterly relieved. “I’d love that,” he says. “God, yes; I’m exhausted, and my father is — well. Let’s go,” he says briskly. “Did you ride here?”

“Walked,” Ben says. “I thought I could ride Lily again? Luke’s taken Bluebell out today.”

“Of course.” Hux fetches his hat, and then shuts the door behind him with a look like that of a man leaving a haunted house, stepping out into the sunshine with relief. They proceed to the stables, Ben updating Hux on the progress of the wedding arrangements:

“So you should expect your invitation in the mail later this summer; they’re sending them to the printers on Thursday,” he tells him.

Hux nearly stops in his tracks. His invitation. He doesn’t know why this should come as such a surprise to him — he and Ben are friends, now, quite decidedly friends — but all the same, the way Ben said it, as if it were natural and perfectly expected for Hux to be invited to the wedding, makes his heart flip over in his chest. He can hardly keep a foolish, beaming grin from his face, and bites his lip to hide it.

“February, then?” he asks, his voice light. “I’ll clear my calendar.”

Ben glances over, and is charmed and touched by the happiness evident on Hux’s face, though he knows not its cause. _He looks so sweet when he smiles._ “Yes,” he replies, smiling back. “We’d like very much to have you there.”

And Hux can make no other reply than to smile still wider, afraid of what he might say in his joy.

Their ride, today, takes them down to the meadow again; it has grown and bloomed still further since the last time they were there. They dismount to let the horses graze, and lie on their backs in the tall grass; Hux closes his eyes, removes his hat, and pillows his head on his hands, enjoying the kiss of the sun on his face. He has come to hate the summer less, this year.

They don’t speak, content in the silence of each other’s presence. Ben, close enough to touch Hux’s arm with his own but holding himself back, wonders idly if this is what being in love is like, if this abiding sense of companionship is what Rey, Poe, and Finn feel when they are together…with passion added, of course, a mutual passion that he will never know with Hux, nor, he dares say, with anyone.

The thought makes him sad. He shakes his head to banish it, not wanting to ruin the afternoon’s mood. Rolling over to sit up, he plucks a long shoot of grass and toys with it, peeling back fine sections and braiding them loosely together. At his side, Hux’s eyes remain closed; the boater hat resting on his his slender chest rises and falls gently with his breathing. Ben has to look away: he is too lovely. The sun drenches his hair and makes it glow, dappling the light freckles on his nose. How Ben longs to kiss each one, and taste the summer on his skin.

That privilege will never be his. His thoughts return to their inexorable conclusion. If Madeleine Aloysius will not be Hux’s wife, then some other girl, someday, surely will; and it will be she who can lean over and kiss the spot — exposed by one button, undone — at the base of Hux’s neck that Ben is sure will taste of honey. It will be she who can lie alongside him and run her fingers over his skin, fit her body into the curve of his and melt into his embrace; it will be she who will recline and arch her back and gasp Hux’s name as he kisses her, and fills her, and takes her for his own. Ben will never know such joys; will never belong to him.

Ben swallows, feeling that traitorous tightness in his chest. He discards his blade of grass and shifts where he sits, willing himself to keep calm. But his sense of peace has disappeared, and he finds himself quite unhappy, all at once. “It’s hot,” he says finally, and Hux’s eyes flutter open. “Should we go in?”

Hux had been hovering on the delicious, golden edge of sleep, lulled there by the sunshine and the scent of grass and the slow, familiar sound of Ben’s breathing. His thoughts had been drifting in a warm and loose direction, imagining what he would do, if by some most-improbable chance, Ben leaned over, and laid a hand on him; would he pretend to sleep, and let him do as he would, only waking when whatever goal Ben had, had been achieved? Or would he wake, and draw that hand to him, and guide Ben as he wished him, til they both reached an end?

This all of course is moot — there had been no touch — and now Ben has roused him from his indulgent reverie, and things are as they have always been.

“If you like,” Hux says, lazy, reluctant. He would have been content to remain out here for hours, all summer, perhaps; for in the sunshine, in his own head, is the only place his dreams of Ben will ever approach reality, and he will happily drown in them. But if the real Ben is unhappy, then Hux will not let him remain so for his own selfish reasons.

He rolls over and stands up, dusting grass from his trousers, and follows Ben to where the horses are hitched, chewing placidly away. They mount again, and set off back to Huxley Hall, and Hux realises that perhaps Ben was right to end their outing; it has gotten very hot, by now, and he is growing uncomfortable in his riding-clothes. He is sweating even before they have crossed back onto their property, and can only imagine how Ben feels, his long dark hair exposed fully to the sun.

Ben is quiet on the ride back. His thoughts, no matter how he tries, will not leave the prospect of Hux being married; it had never crossed his mind before London, and although that, at least, had not ended the way he had feared, it is now all he can think about, what with Rey and Poe’s wedding being the only talk at home. He has worked himself into a silent torment by the time they reach the stables, and as they are unsaddling the horses, his words finally burst free.

“Hux,” Ben asks, trying to sound casual, “aren’t you the most eligible young man in the county, now that Poe is off the market?”

Hux, caught by surprise, stops in his search for a currycomb, his back to Ben. “Well, yes, if you aren’t counting yourself,” he replies, his voice light and even. “And I don’t know why you wouldn’t be.”

But Ben shakes his head. “I’m not. No, I — no.” He hesitates, struggling. “So, then — shouldn’t you also be thinking of betrothal? Now that things with Madeleine are…finished? Surely there must be someone closer to home.”

Hux clears his throat. He’s found the comb he needs; it’s clutched tight in his hand, his knuckles going white around it. He keeps his back to Ben as he answers, shortly, “There isn’t.”

“But — was there ever? I’d have thought your father would have picked you out a bride when you were still a babe in arms.” Ben doesn’t know why he presses: to be entirely certain, he supposes, as if that will ever make good any claim of his on Hux.

“Actually, I had just turned eleven,” Hux informs him, stiff. “But then my mother died, and things…fell through. I never even met the girl.”

A silence.

“I see.”

“Yes.”

Hux turns abruptly round, goes to groom Millicent without meeting Ben’s eyes. Ben watches him, one hand running down Lily’s side, over and over and over. His voice hitches just barely when he asks, “And there hasn’t been anyone…since then, but for Madeleine?”

Hux’s heart skips a beat. “No.” He pauses, clears his throat. “Until Mrs Aloysius came along, my father hadn’t exactly been concerned with planning for my future. And I can’t say that I have been inclined to seek out a…suitable girl myself.”

Ben says nothing. He seems to un-freeze, moving suddenly to fetch a brush for Lily, turning at once to grooming her with a ferocious focus.

Hux combs a last knot from Millicent’s mane and then, indifferently, asks, “And what about you?”

Unseen by Hux, Ben swallows hard, his Adam’s apple jumping in his throat. His jaw tightens and then unclenches; he turns away from Lily and goes to the grooming cupboard to put away his things, taking time to pull his thoughts together before coming to stand nearer (but not _too_ near) Hux; and finally he says, “What _about_ me?”

“Well, you know,” Hux says, making a dismissive gesture. Ben follows his pale hand with his eyes. “A son of the American élite should find himself a proper British heiress while sojourning on our fair shores, should he not?”

Ben gives a forced laugh. “My mother…” He swallows again. “My education is paramount,” he explains, echoing Leia’s oft-repeated words. “I’m not going to Oxford to find a wife.”

“And what about back home?” Hux asks. He locks eyes with Ben for a moment. He imagines a brash, grinning, over-rouged American belle with an accent more jarring than Ben’s, with big breasts and a bigger fortune; imagines this fictional harlot wrapping her arms around Ben’s neck, whispering saucy things in his ear; imagines Ben laughing low and pressing his lips to hers —

“No. Not at home, either,” Ben says, keeping his eyes on Hux’s. He feels, distantly, his heartbeat speeding up.

“There isn’t a girl?” Hux asks again, his voice sharp. “No one at all?”

Ben shakes his head.

There is a silence. Hux shifts: his gaze flicks to the stable doors. Ben waits.

“And — has there ever been?” Hux asks finally, his voice low.

Ben hesitates. He feels himself at a cliff’s edge. Hux’s eyes burn into his; Ben sees his chest rise and fall sharply, sees him swallow hard, and feels his own heart begin to beat even faster.

Ben shakes his head, and tells the truth. “No.”

His tongue darts out to sweep nervously across his lips, and it’s then that Hux drops the comb and reaches for him — pulls him closer in an instant, bridges the distance between them as if there was nothing to stop him.

_“Oh,”_ Ben breathes, in the space between, and then Hux’s lips are on his.

His eyes are closed fiercely: Ben’s own slide shut too, as he finds himself kissing him back with a fervour, a madness he recognises from the night that Hux came home. He opens his mouth with a soft moan. Hux’s teeth graze his bottom lip and Ben shivers, nearly cries out. Hux pulls back and says softly, “Shh — we must be careful”; and then he kisses him again, hard, stifling Ben’s whisper of his name.

Ben feels himself responding, and without deciding to do so he presses himself against Hux’s slim body, pushes him back up against the stable wall. He doesn’t know at all what he’s doing, but nonetheless Hux murmurs his approval and leans his head back, baring his throat for Ben to kiss:

“But don’t leave a mark,” he cautions him, his practicality at odds with the desire in his voice. He inhales sharply as Ben kisses down his neck, clumsily untying his cravat and opening his collar to drag his tongue along the lines of his clavicle. Hux is fumbling at his gloves, to throw them to the floor and take a fistful of Ben’s hair; Ben’s name escapes his lips, quiet and desperate, and Ben crushes his mouth back to Hux’s to taste the sound of it.

“Ben.”

After several minutes Hux pulls back. His full lips are swollen, his perfectly styled hair falls in his eyes. His shoulders in their neat pressed shirt are heaving with his shallow breaths; his pupils are wide, from more than just the dim light of the stables.

He is exactly the opposite of the composed marble man who looked at Ben with disdain when they first met, at Huxley Hall —  _just up the path! —_ nine weeks ago; and it’s _Ben_ who’s brought him to this state, who’s made him look like this. Ben shivers.

“What is it?” he asks, low, charged.

“Ben.” Hux repeats his name, his whisper serious. He glances down, and all at once Ben understands. He looks back up to meet Hux’s eyes, questioning.

“Would you —?” Hux asks.

Slowly, Ben nods. He gets to his knees.

“Have you ever done this before?” Hux asks, as Ben stares at the place between his legs and does not move.

Ben shakes his head. He glances up: his eyes are wide and dark and searching. “You have,” he says, and it is not a question. He fidgets, in clear discomfort; Hux sees the hardness in his trousers.

Hux nods. The sight of Ben on his knees is more distracting than he could’ve imagined. “There’s time for that later,” he says with quiet urgency. “Here — let me,” he adds, and he begins to undo his trousers, his fingers pale as lilies in front of Ben’s face.

Ben is motionless, his heart thundering in his ears. He thrills at Hux’s words —  _later, later,_ he’d said, meaning there will be more of this, more of them, alone, like this, he _wants_ more of this, later —

“Here,” Hux says again, and he has opened his trousers down to his drawers.

Ben swallows. He can see Hux’s cock, see it hard and reddened through the fine-woven white silk. He feels an ache in his groin: he has never _wanted_ like this before.

“Do you need me to —?” Hux asks, when Ben remains unmoving; but now finally he unfreezes, and lifts his hands to the buttons on Hux’s drawers. His fingers shake as he undoes them; he is sure that at any moment the stable doors will be thrown open and they will be discovered, they will be shamed and punished. He works open the last button and Hux’s cock is freed, slick at the tip, nestled in curling red hair. Ben shifts on his knees and bites into his lower lip. He thinks he is shaking.

“Do you know what to do?” Hux’s voice is still quiet, but there is that edge of urgency — of need and too of fear. _Hurry,_ his tone tells Ben, _we are not safe here._ Ben looks up; he knows this. He shakes his head.

“Move closer.”

Ben shuffles forth on his knees, his liquid eyes uncertain.

“Open your mouth,” Hux tells him —  _oh his mouth, his lovely mouth —_ and he guides himself between Ben’s lips, which part for him with the tiniest sigh of surprise. “There,” Hux whispers, as Ben opens wider, hesitant, to take more of him inside. His mouth is so warm around him. “There. Like that.”

Hux reaches down to run his hands through Ben’s hair. It is damp and tousled from the ride, but still soft and silky, slipping between his fingers. He curls his hands into fists, tugging on the strands, and Ben gasps around his cock, his eyes fluttering shut.

“Good?” Hux murmurs, as Ben begins to suck at him with something of a rhythm, of a greed. “Is that good, Ben, do you like that?” He pulls at his hair again, gently sweetly still, and Ben gives a stifled moan.

Ben can feel his own cock leaking, and it takes all his willpower to keep himself upright with his mouth on Hux, not to rut against the stable floor. Hesitantly he lifts his hands to Hux’s hips and braces himself there; Hux hums, and thrusts just slightly farther into Ben’s mouth. Ben takes him deeper, concentrating, tasting salt.

“You’re good at this,” Hux murmurs, and Ben chances a glance up at him. He sees Hux looking down at him like he wants to devour him, and yet — there is something in his eyes, a fierce gentleness. He looks at Ben as if he is the first ever to do so. “Do you like it, Ben?” Hux asks him, soft and rough. “Do you like this?”

Gingerly, Ben nods.

“So pretty on your knees,” Hux whispers. “Look at you. Look at your mouth, oh, your pretty mouth.”

Ben cannot help but moan around his cock, a shiver coursing through him at Hux’s words. He can feel himself hovering on the edge already. Control, too, seems to be slipping from Hux’s grasp; the slow thrusts of his hips are growing more erratic, his breathing shallow and open-mouthed.

“Ben,” Hux says between panting breaths, “oh, Ben, I’m close, oh — you don’t have to —  _oh,”_ he hisses, and by instinct Ben draws back just in time; Hux guides himself to spill onto the stable floor, his free hand tightening in Ben’s hair as his body spasms.

Seconds later, unable even to free his cock from his trousers, palming frantically at himself through them, Ben — overwhelmed by the sight of Hux, by the act of giving pleasure on his knees — is coming too, hot and messy inside his drawers. He cannot restrain the startled _“Ah”_ that escapes his lips, too loud in the vaulted space. His shoulders convulse, his hips jerk, and then finally he is still, breathing far too hard. His face, he realises, is flushed red and hot.

They are silent for a long moment. Ben cannot collect his thoughts; he is not sure he is not dreaming. Finally he finds the courage to look up at Hux.

“So,” Hux says. Ben cannot read his eyes: they are bright, almost wild. Slowly, Hux tucks himself away, buttoning his drawers and trousers again, re-tying his cravat, straightening his collar and riding jacket. His eyes stray to his gloves, discarded on the floor, but he does not pick them up.

“So,” Ben repeats, wavering between terror, shame, and the urge to kiss Hux again and never stop. “Was I…was that what you wanted?” he whispers. “Was that — enough?” He does not have the language, he does not know the words to use, to express what has passed between them here: this unexpected culmination. A fulfilment.

Hux looks at him, inscrutable, for another agonising moment — and then his face breaks, incredibly, into a beatific smile. “Yes,” he tells him. He gives a long exhale. “Oh, Ben,” he says, almost rueful, and gives a short sharp laugh. “Oh Ben,” he says again. “If you only — if you knew what I have been through, these last months — trying to keep myself from you, from even _thinking_ of you — and now this…” He laughs again.

“What do you mean?” Ben’s voice is suddenly harsh and desperate; he does not understand.

_“Yes,”_ Hux repeats forcefully. “Yes, you were what I wanted, you were _enough —_ oh, Ben,” he says once more. “I _want_ you. I have wanted you for weeks.”

“But you were so cold,” Ben whispers, disbelieving. He is still on his knees; they dig into the hard floor, painfully, but he does not get up. “At first, I thought — I thought you disdained me, _hated_ me, even — I didn’t understand why you wanted to spend time with me, why you wanted to help me —” He breaks off, because Hux, silently, is shaking his head.

“I couldn’t stand to be around you, at first,” he says, low, “because I didn’t know what I might say, what I might _do —_ but it was worse not to be with you. I was tortured either way. And so I sought you out, I made up reasons, I could not stay away. But still I couldn’t… You understand,” he says, gesturing in the air. He swallows. “You know the risks.”

Ben nods. “I might guess you know them better,” he ventures. He looks at Hux: their eyes meet. “But I wanted you, too,” he says quietly. It is the first time he has said it aloud, has admitted it with conviction; and as he says the words he feels a change, a burden lifting. “I didn’t know what it meant — but I still did,” he adds in a rush. “From the beginning. From that very first day, even if I didn’t realise it yet.” He swallows, looking up at Hux. “I never thought — I never let myself think —”

He breaks off, overwhelmed by the improbability of this, the near-miraculous odds that have brought them here, to this dusty sun-baked stable on this summer afternoon.

Hux nods, once. “I know,” he says, and Ben can hear the same cautious disbelief in his tone. “I understand. I…” He seems about to say more, and then shakes his head. “Come,” he says abruptly. “It’s getting late.”

He moves, quickly, to fetch a bucket of water, and then with a look of distaste he cleans the mess they have made from the worn dirty floorboards. Ben stands, finally, his legs stiff and knees sore, and watches, mute. He feels altogether dazed.

When Hux has finished cleaning up, they go to the doors together, and bar them behind them as they go. Millicent nickers her goodbyes. The sun is low in the sky, painting it a rosy orange as they walk up the path to the manor in silence.

At the place where the roads diverge — one back to Luke’s estate, the other to the Huxleys’ drive — they stop. Hux turns to Ben, and they look at each other for a moment, each trying to absorb the weight of the day, the borders being redrawn around them.

“Another ride tomorrow?” It’s Ben who speaks up, the evening chorus of insects’ chirps and buzzes starting up around them.

Hux gives a smile, as warm and gentle as Ben has ever seen him. In the dusk his face glows. “Tomorrow,” he agrees. He nods, and lifts a distracted hand to the seam of his left glove, straightening it around his slim wrist.

Ben looks around them, his gaze darting. They are alone as far as the eye can see, the moors in their summer splendour sweeping out all around them. “Thank you,” he says softly; and quickly he takes up Hux’s hand, squeezes. A brief nervous touch, new and unsure — and then he turns away, and strides fast down the path taking him away from here, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

Hux watches him go, not moving. Before he disappears down the slight rise and out of his view, Ben glances back over his shoulder; Hux lifts a hand to wave; and then the sunset swallows him up.

 

* * *

 

The episode in the stable is repeated several times over the next several days — first in Ben’s head, that night, as he takes himself in hand and brings himself to a furious, intensely relieving climax, feeling truly free to do so for the first time all summer. He gasps Hux’s name into his fist as he comes, and turns over onto his side, sated, once he’s finished, shivering all over at the thought of being touched by him. _One day. One day._ He has no nightmares that night.

And he gets his wish, and soon. The next time is behind the abandoned greenhouse on the Huxleys’ property, two afternoons later: this time Hux gets to his knees for Ben, and Ben fights not to scream, for his lips are so soft, his mouth is so _hot;_ and his hands fist fiercely in Hux’s short soft red hair as he bucks helplessly and comes down his throat. They part ways without having to say aloud that they will meet again tomorrow.

The time after that they go for a trail ride and dismount deep in the woods, and Hux takes Ben’s cock in his hand and strokes him to hardness until he spills onto the forest floor, and he cries out as loud as he likes, the hush of the forest enveloping them. When he can breathe again he returns the favour with his mouth; when Hux comes, Ben, reckless, swallows it all. Hux kisses him, and tastes himself, and thinks with a heady chill that they have gone too far, now, ever to go back to how they were.

_(This can’t last,_ a voice in his head reminds him. _One way or another, this will come to an end._ Hux silences this voice, and thinks of Ben instead.)

The time after that comes one week — only a week, and what a week it has been — after their first encounter. This time, Hux’s father is not home, and so after a vigorous jaunt round the property, racing each other until their horses protest, they hurry up to Hux’s room, drenched in sweat and breathing hard. Hux locks his bedroom door behind them and then without a word they fall upon each other, Hux tugging at Ben’s clothes, stripping off the sweat-soaked layers in seconds until they can reach greedily for and touch and grasp at naked flesh.

They tumble back onto Hux’s bed and rut against each other, their mouths coming together every few breaths in urgent, messy, violent kisses. Ben is moaning, desperately hard already, and Hux does not bother to hush him, drinking in instead the rough, gasping sounds torn from deep in his throat. He puts his mouth to one nipple and sucks, bites, and Ben yelps, cries out, _“Please,_ Hux,” not knowing for what he asks, knowing only that he wants _more._ Hux gives it to him, grinding his hips hard into Ben’s, watching with satisfaction as Ben’s whole body tenses and he comes, quickly, his cock spurting thick onto his stomach, his head thrown back and his mouth forming Hux’s name.

With hardly more urging, Hux comes too, taking himself in hand to stroke himself to climax and catching his spend there, exhaling a long, shuddering breath. When he opens his eyes again Ben is watching him with an open, _virginal_ hunger, his colour high, his expressive eyes telegraphing painful, unrestrainable lust. His spent cock twitches again, and Ben shivers. Hux offers him his hand. Cupping it in his own, Ben brings it to his mouth and licks it clean, his eyes on Hux’s all the while. He is quivering.

When he has swallowed the last of it he lies back on the bed and closes his eyes. His chest is still rising and falling unevenly. Hux lies down next to him, feeling Ben’s body radiating heat. He stares up at the plasterwork ceiling and listens to the sweltering summer silence outside.

“Come to dinner.” Ben breaks the hush after a few moments. Hux looks over at him:

“What?”

“Come to dinner, tonight. I want you to meet everyone.”

Hux frowns. “I’ve come to tea dozens of times. I’ve met everyone, haven’t I?” He is thrown off, suddenly picturing a secret sister, a spinster aunt kept cooped-up in the attic — but Ben nods.

“You have, but — but it’s not the same. They don’t really know you, yet, and I want them to. I want them to understand what you mean to me.” Ben’s voice is quiet, careful, shy, and when he looks up at Hux, his kiss is the same: tentative, but full of yearning. “And if you came for dinner,” he adds, when they break apart, “you could stay the night.”

“How would we explain that to your mother?”

Ben shrugs. “Studying. Anything. I don’t care, and with luck, she won’t, either.” He runs a hand down Hux’s bare side, tentative, marvelling. “I want…I want to fall asleep with you. Just — sleep, and be held. I want a night with you.”

Hux exhales. Ben’s innocence, the wide-eyed sweetness with which he is learning of pleasure and touch, entrances him. There are so many things he wants to do with him, now he has been given permission, but these can wait. If Ben wants to sleep in his arms, Hux will oblige gladly; he cannot refuse him anything, and wonders if he ever will. _But not now._

“Oh, Ben.” Hux strokes his hair. “I want that, too,” he tells him, “and we’ll have it. We’ll have more than a night; we’ll have as many nights as you’d like.” He sighs. “Just not tonight.”

Ben frowns. “Why not?”

“My father is back from London tonight. I should be there for supper.”

“But you’ve hired a cook and a footman.” The cancellation of the trip to France had left Hux with enough money to hire a skeleton staff, and they both know how much of a relief this is for him; so Ben doesn’t understand why he still feels the need to be home.

“I know, yes,” Hux acknowledges. “But my father was called into the city with some urgency, and I should be here when he returns. If our affairs _have_ become unstable, then I ought to know straightaway.”

Hux had been alarmed when Brendon had been summoned to London for a meeting with the same Austrian businessmen who’d assured them that their assets were safe just weeks ago. But if this summer has taught Hux anything, it’s how quickly things — anything at all — can change.

“I understand.” Ben’s face is downcast.

Hux hates to have disappointed him. “Tomorrow,” he suggests instead. “Tomorrow, I’ll come over for a lesson in the morning.” He raises his eyebrows, indicating what kind of instruction will be provided, and is rewarded with a quirk of the mouth from Ben. “And then, if your family doesn’t mind, I’ll find myself staying into the afternoon, and then decide that I’m not needed at home for supper after all. Will that do?”

“Yes,” Ben agrees, warming to the idea. “And then after supper, perhaps, it’ll just be too late and too dark for you to think of riding home; so I’ll suggest that a guest room be made up — the one nearest my room should do nicely.” He smiles. “We do want to keep you safe.”

“How courteous of you.” Hux kisses, slow, teasing, down Ben’s neck, making him shiver deliciously. “What hospitality.”

“Nothing but the best for you,” Ben murmurs, and exhales, closing his eyes, arching his back, and letting Hux do as he will.

 

* * *

 

The next morning — the twenty-fourth — before going to Ben’s, Hux takes his breakfast and sits down with the papers, as he usually does. He is paging without much interest through the _Telegraph_ when he stumbles across an ominous announcement.

“The Austrians have issued an ultimatum to Serbia,” Hux says aloud, startling the new footman, Mitaka, who is pouring his tea.

“Sir?”

“Last night,” Hux answers, distractedly, busily scanning the page for more details. “They’re insisting that the Serbs allow them to perform another investigation into the deaths of Franz Ferdinand and the Archduchess. And the Serbian government is to crack down on militant nationalist groups at once. Our Cabinet is meeting today, to talk about Ireland; but I suspect this will quickly become the new topic of discussion.”

He sips at his tea, absorbed in the rest of the article, but finds a disappointing lack of further news. Mitaka is hovering, looking concerned. “That will be all,” Hux says, looking up: he’s still adjusting to having staff again, and Mitaka is new, requiring rather more prodding and instruction than most. “You may go.”

“But sir,” the young man asks hesitantly, his dark brows creasing, “what will this mean? Will Austria and Serbia go to war for certain?”

“Perhaps,” Hux says, impatiently. He folds the paper and sets it aside, knocks back the rest of his tea. Europe can wait; he is seeing Ben today. “Read that, if you like. I’m off.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Mitaka hurries to clear the dishes, but Hux sees him craning to read the paper as he does. He strides briskly from the kitchen and out the door, ready to saddle Millie up and ride straight to Ben’s door.

“Hello, Mr. Huxley!” Leia, passing through the foyer on her way down to breakfast, greets him when he arrives and is announced by Cecil. “Taking Ben on a ride again today?” she enquires, gesturing at his riding-clothes.

“Unfortunately, no; just a lesson today,” Hux answers her, smiling professionally in return. “He’s making great progress. I’m sure he’ll be well caught-up to the other first-years at Oxford, if not, perhaps, even ahead of some of them.” _In some areas, certainly._

“Well, I’m terribly glad to see he’s taking initiative,” Leia approves. “And thank you for lending a helping hand.”

“It’s my pleasure.” Hux smiles inwardly. “Is Ben upstairs?”

“He is,” Leia tells him. “Go on up; I’m sure he’ll be very pleased to see you.”

“I think he will.”

With a last cordial smile at Leia, Hux turns and goes up the spiral staircase, keeping his pace as natural as he can despite his mounting anticipation.

He goes down the long hallway to Ben’s bedroom, which he has only visited once before, on the day of the storm. He wonders, with a dizzying sense of possibility, how many days — and nights — he now might get to spend there. But he tempers himself; there have been worries on his mind, since they began their — he hates to say —  _liaison._

Those worries, however, can be addressed another day. For now, there is only Ben, and a whole day and night with him. Hux approaches his door, mostly closed, and quietly pushes it open.

Ben’s back is to Hux; he sits at his escritoire, hunched over a page, his right hand holding a pencil and moving furiously. He didn’t seem to hear Hux come in, and Hux takes a moment just to look at him: Ben’s hair is loose about his face, he’s in shirtsleeves and rumpled trousers, and his feet are bare. He looks every inch the passionate artist, devoutly intent on his work, and for a moment Hux feels almost reluctant to disturb him; but then he smiles, thinking with a thrill of what will come next. Finally, he says softly, “Hello.”

Ben gives a start and whips his head round, instinctively shielding his work with his arm. “Oh! You’re here already,” he says, disoriented and disarmed. He surreptitiously moves his sketch further out of Hux’s view.

Hux notices the motion and cocks an eyebrow, teasing. “What’s that you’ve got there, then?”

“Nothing,” Ben replies too quickly, his face colouring — “Hey!” he protests, when Hux steps closer and pokes his head over Ben’s shoulder before he can whisk the drawing away. “It’s not done yet.”

“Is that _me?”_ Hux asks, delighted. He’d barely caught a look at the artwork, but the flash of orange — the only colour in the piece — gave him hint enough. Ben’s huffing non-reply gives him a further clue. “Why, _Benjamin,_ have you been making _portraits?”_

“Oh, quiet,” Ben protests, his face colouring further. He folds his sketchpad closed with a pointed look at Hux, and then stands, arms crossed indignantly; but he’s smiling, just a little, in utmost sheepishness. “It’s silly, I know.”

“Sweet,” Hux corrects, reaching up to kiss Ben’s lips. “I think it’s terribly sweet.”

Ben returns the kiss briefly, but then pulls back: “Wait,” he says, and goes to the door, which is half-open from Hux’s coming in. He closes it firmly, turns the key in the lock, and then turns back to Hux, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Studying requires a certain amount of privacy, you know.”

“Of course,” Hux responds, smirking. “How could I have forgotten?”

Ben gives a low laugh and then bends to kiss him again. Soon enough they’re lying on Ben’s bed, the late-morning sunlight coming filmy through the curtains and bathing them in a dreamy, dusty warmth. Hux runs his fingers through Ben’s long hair; he hums and arches into the touch like a satisfied cat.

“Studying,” Ben murmurs lazily, eyes closed. “We should be studying.”

“We are. The capital of Norway is?” Hux invents, trailing his fingers down Ben’s neck.

“Mm…Kristiania,” Ben answers, correctly. Hux kisses him swiftly, tugging at his bottom lip with his teeth. “Oh — do that again, won’t you?”

“The author of _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,_ first,” Hux requests, and when Ben says, “George Gordon, Lord Byron, of course,” obligingly kisses him again. Ben kisses back greedily, wrapping a hand round the back of Hux’s neck, but Hux pulls back:

“Think of your _education,_ young man,” he chides. He begins unbuttoning Ben’s shirt as he says, “Discuss the famous _To be or not to be_ soliloquy in act three of _Hamlet,_ if you please.”

Ben sighs hugely, rolling his eyes before answering. “The soliloquy represents Hamlet’s unwillingness to kill his uncle, but also the knowledge that if he doesn’t do it, he’ll live forever in the same tortured state of limbo and inaction —  _Hux!_ Honestly,” Ben complains, squirming under his touch. “That’s enough studying for one day, don’t you think?” he beseeches.

“Look who’s changed his tone,” Hux comments mildly, undoing Ben’s trousers.

“That _could_ be because your _hands_ are —”

“Then I’ll remove my hands,” Hux says innocently, ceasing his current activities and holding said hands in the air. “Better?”

Ben groans. “You _absolute —_ ”

“Full name of the German Kaiser,” Hux chooses at random, smirking down at Ben.

“Friedrich Wilhelm Albrecht Victor — no, that’s not right —  _Victor Albrecht_ von Preussen,” Ben rattles off, splendidly mangling the German pronunciations.

He sits up and reaches for Hux, imploring, greedy, and it is with difficulty that Hux stops him and says, “About the Kaiser, Ben.” He clears his throat, all joking forgotten for the moment.

Ben pauses, his hands resting on the lapels of Hux’s jacket and fingering them absently. “What is it?”

“Have you seen the news this morning?”

Ben’s forehead creases. “The Austrians’ ultimatum. Yes. What do you say about it?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking…” Hux takes a moment to gather his thoughts. “If the Serbians don’t meet their demands, which seems likely, then Austria may out-and-out declare war. And if they do, then Germany will most probably support them; and then, well, it won’t just be a silly Balkan disagreement anymore, will it?”

These possibilities have been floating around Hux’s head since he saw the news at breakfast, and they are even more unpleasant now he has voiced them. But Ben still doesn’t want to jump straight to the conclusion he fears.

“Why is that a problem? It’s still nothing to do with us.” He is defensive, where before he had been wary of Hux’s optimism; all at once he wishes he had been wrong all along.

“Alliances, Ben,” Hux explains patiently. “Russia will back Serbia if Austria strikes against them. France and Russia are allies, and long-time enemies of Germany. If Germany, say, decided to invade France directly, they would have to go through Belgium; and Belgium and England have a treaty. We would have to join in. Do you see how it multiplies, like a domino effect?”

 “So then…what will you do?” Ben asks. He hates that Hux now seems quite convinced of what, just weeks ago, he’d scoffed at and dismissed as unformed and improbable fears.

“I’ll do whatever I can, of course. I’ll have no other choice than to fight.” Hux sounds almost defeated, admitting he has been wrong — but all the same, now his opinion has changed, he is firm in it. He looks Ben seriously in the eyes, and it almost frightens Ben, the absolute determination there: no ambiguity, no room for debate. “What else would you have me do? I am a soldier, Ben. I’ve chosen this life, and everything that might come with it.”

“But maybe you won’t have to fight at all,” Ben suggests, knowing he’s grasping at straws. “This is all speculation, isn’t it? Maybe Germany won’t try to get to France, and maybe Britain won’t _have_ to join in — maybe it’ll all blow over by summer’s end, like you and Poe thought it would, and you won’t have to go.” His brow creases deeper; there is desperation in his voice.

Hux sighs. He takes a moment to think, and then he tells Ben, reluctantly voicing the conclusion he should have seen coming all along, “Right now I see no other way it could go. Germany is too embroiled with Austria’s affairs to back out now — they’re counting on the Kaiser’s support; and it’s only natural that they should try and take France. And then Britain will have to step in and help.”

He sees something like despair in Ben’s eyes, and it gives him pause.

“Ben,” Hux says gently, after a moment. He supposes that now is as good, or as poor, a time as any, to voice his other fears: fears about them. “We know that this can’t last. You’re going up to Oxford, anyway — if I had to go to war it’d be that much cleaner of a break, wouldn’t it? Nothing…tempting us. No way to work around it.” He makes a sharp gesture with his hand, not looking Ben in the eyes. “Over.”

“Over,” Ben repeats dully. “Yes.”

“You know there’s no way to — to keep going, indefinitely,” Hux says. “It’s a crime, you know that.” He clears his throat. “If we’re lucky, we’ll have all summer,” he continues, but his words are hollow, torn unwilling from his lips. He still won’t look at Ben. “But just the summer, Ben. That’s all we can risk.”

“No,” Ben says firmly. “No. I don’t want to be careful.” He leans up to kiss Hux fiercely. “I want more than the summer. I want the autumn, and the winter, and the spring, and _next_ summer, and the summer after that. I want — everything, Hux, and I want it with you.”

“Ben.” Hux exhales. He reaches out, cups Ben’s face in his hand: Ben’s dark eyes are wide, his full mouth trembling on the edge of an anxious moue. Hux traces a finger over his skin, connecting beauty-spots, and Ben closes his eyes, fairly quivers under his touch. His lips part, fretful, tender.

“Ben,” Hux murmurs again, and leans to kiss him, feeling something come undone inside his chest. “I want that, too; God knows I want it. But we cannot have it. We can’t.”

A traitorous tear slides down Ben’s cheek, followed swiftly by another. Hux is not one to display his emotions, but he cannot stop his throat from growing tight. He swallows.

“I know,” Ben whispers. “But — can’t we just pretend?”

Hux sighs. He is helpless, with Ben. “Come here,” he says gently, and draws Ben close to him. Ben puts up his face to be kissed, and Hux cannot but bend to meet him, to touch him softly until he sighs and shivers against him.

“Please,” Ben murmurs, and Hux does not, cannot, tell him no. Their bodies meet, and they pretend.

 

* * *

 

Supper is small, that night — Rey, Finn, and Poe are out together, leaving Ben and Hux alone with Luke and Leia. Ben had been worried, wondering, perhaps absurdly, if such an intimate gathering would subject him and Hux to intense scrutiny (his mother’s), under which one or both of them might flounder; but his fears prove utterly unfounded.

Hux is the perfect guest: as charming, erudite, and appropriately loquacious as Ben has ever seen him; the English country gentleman in top form. With his hair rearranged and the flush gone from his handsome face, one would never guess that he had spent most of the day with his hands and lips all over the young man of the house.

Ben’s earlier sadness had mostly dissipated under Hux’s attentions, but has not entirely gone away: Hux can still sense a reticence to him, and is not surprised, therefore, when as the pudding is being served, Ben turns to him and puts the next stage of their plan in motion.

“It’s awfully late, Hux,” Ben says, his forehead creasing. “I’m sorry we’ve kept you so long; you have to ride back, still, and it’s so dark already.”

“Oh, no, it’s no trouble.” Hux improvises his lines smoothly. “I’ll be quite all right.”

An unexpected actor joins the scene, and, unknowingly, hastens its progress: “It _is_ late,” Leia interjects, glancing to the carriage-clock. “Are you certain you want to ride back, Mr Huxley? Perhaps it would be safer for you just to stay the night. We can put you up in a spare room.”

“The one near my room has just had its sheets changed,” Ben hurries to add. “Elsie did them yesterday. Will that do for you, Hux?”

“I’d hate to impose,” Hux protests, even as he catches Ben’s eye and gives him the subtlest of smiles. “But if you’re sure that it’s no trouble…”

“None at all, my dear boy,” Luke, seated at the head of the table, promises. Over the course of the evening he seems to have taken quite a shine to Hux, praising his education, his prowess to date in the army, and the memory of his mother, whose eyes, he insists, Hux has. “It’s the least we can do to repay you for hosting us in France.”

“Which I haven’t done, yet,” Hux reminds him, abashed. “One day, I promise you, when everything in Europe has got back to normal again. For now, though — well, I would be very grateful not to have to ride back tonight. I’m getting quite tired.” Showily, he gives a yawn, and pushes aside the rest of his port.

“If you’d like, I can show you your room now,” offers Ben, already standing.

“Thank you, Ben.” Hux bids his goodnights to the twin scions of the Skywalker clan, dipping a little bow to Leia, and then follows Ben, hovering at the door, out into the foyer and toward the stairs.

“Nicely played,” Hux tells him, low, as they hurry upstairs.

“My mother didn’t suspect a thing,” Ben answers, grinning. “She made things so much easier.”

“I’ll have to thank her in the morning.” Hux smiles slyly, and follows Ben down the hall, past his own room, to a bedroom across the hall. Ben darts quickly out again, and returns with a pair of cotton pyjamas, a bar of soap, a flannel, and a bath towel, proffering them all, shyly, to Hux:

“There’ll be hot water in the morning; I thought you might like a bath. Do you need anything else?”

“This will all do splendidly.” Hux folds the towel over his arm and smiles at Ben. “For now, I’m for bed,” he says, in case anyone should be around to hear. “Goodnight, Ben.” He reaches out to clap his back in a friendly embrace, and leans close to his ear to whisper, “Come to me at midnight.”

Ben nods eagerly when they pull back. “Goodnight, Hux,” he replies, loudly, and goes off to his own room with a secretive grin on his face. Hux watches until his door has closed, and then closes his own and begins to dress for bed, feeling a delicious anticipation.

He has not brought a book with him, but pokes around the guest room’s drawers and comes up with _Pilgrim’s Progress,_ which he read and was thoroughly bored by at school. But midnight is still an hour off, and he’s nothing else to do, so he settles in, willing the clock to go faster than the spiritual journey of Bunyan’s Christian does.

Finally, midnight comes, and with it, a gentle knock at his door. The rest of the family, including the returned Rey and Finn, have gone to bed — Hux heard them, their called-out goodnights as they trooped up the stairs, the doors of bedrooms closing one-by-one — so it can be no-one else but Ben. Hux tosses his book aside with relief and hurries to let him in.

Ben says nothing as he opens the door, only steps inside and then kisses Hux full on the mouth, shutting the door firmly behind him. Hux responds readily, slipping his hands around Ben’s waist: “Hello,” he murmurs against his lips. “Long time no see.”

“Too long,” replies Ben, moving them back toward the bed. He turns them so that he’s sitting down with Hux held on his lap.

Hux has learned that Ben is quite fascinated by his slightness and the difference in their builds, and is happy to indulge him in this. He wraps his pyjama-clad legs neatly around Ben’s waist and takes his plush lower lip between both of his, coaxing a shudder from Ben that ripples through his whole body.

The intensity with which Ben seems to feel everything — pleasure, pain — is, Hux is quickly beginning to find, intoxicating. He himself has never felt like that before, with any previous lover, and wonders if it is simply something in Ben’s character that is lacking in his own: this way of wearing his heart so close to his skin. Even when Hux was still a virgin, he never was able to put himself so entirely into another's hands, to let his emotions go to this extent. All of his previous relationships have been transactions, plain and simple, to varyingly literal degrees, and all steeped in some way in guilt or shame or fear. Never before has he known the abandon that he has found, here, with Ben.

Eventually they move and shift, until they are lying side-by-side on the pillows, kissing lazily. Ben’s legs are twined tightly with Hux’s, and Hux’s hand is in his hair; he remembers how Ben had shivered and moaned, when he’d gripped fistfuls of it that first day in the stable. Even the gentlest grasp, today, has Ben humming low in his throat and pressing himself closer to Hux, hungry and wanting. He starts to move his hands down between their legs, but with a hand on his wrist, Hux stops him:

“We shouldn’t,” he tells Ben. “Not with your family all here.”

“They’re sleeping,” Ben protests. “They won’t hear us.”

“But if they do…”

Ben sighs, resigned. “I suppose.” He removes his hands, and brings one up to trace over Hux’s cheekbone instead, his thumb following the lines of his face down to his lips.

Hux kisses it, gently, and Ben smiles, his eyes half-lidded. They kiss again, and although Hux burns for him — can feel that Ben does, too — he accepts that this will be all they do, tonight. _And it’s enough. Remember how lucky you are, to have even this._

Ben, for his part, is feeling the same breathless ache that has come over him every day they’ve been together, since the very first time. It is a feeling of impossibility, half-happiness, half-despair — for this is the best thing Ben has ever known, but as Hux had reminded him the other day, it cannot last. And still, even now, Ben cannot truly believe that he deserves it: that he should have it at all.

At some point, this feeling becomes unbearable. Ben pulls back, saying Hux’s name. He knows he needs to address this, speak it aloud, or remain prisoner to it forever. Hux’s eyes flutter open as Ben breaks the kiss, and he frowns, softly, at him:

“What is it?”

Ben hesitates. He shifts in the bed to pillow his face against Hux’s chest, and then looks up at him, trying to formulate what to say. He decides to begin with what he had guessed that very first day, which Hux had neither confirmed nor denied, but which has not been brought up since:

“I wanted to know…” He pauses, embarrassed. “You said…when I guessed, in the stables, that you had…done that before, you told me you’d tell me later.” He bites his lip. “It’s later now.”

“Good God. I had almost forgotten. You really want to know?” This is alien to Hux: he has never told new lovers of those who came before; he has never been with anyone long enough for it to matter, nor has either party ever cared.

But Ben — so painfully shy, chewing his lip as if to draw blood — clearly does. Against Hux’s chest, he nods. “You’ve…been with people before? With — men?”

“Yes, I have,” Hux admits. “At school, you know — these things happen. They'll deny it, the headmasters and the teachers and the other boys, but they do happen.”

“At Sandhurst? Or Charterhouse?”

“Both,” Hux replies. “At Charterhouse there was a younger boy — dark-haired, always sun-tanned; looked a little like you, come to think of it.” He caresses Ben’s hair as he says this, and feels him nestle still closer against him. “But nothing happened, with him. He was younger; he was sweet, and so shy; I felt I'd be corrupting him if I so much as looked at him too long. I kept him out of trouble as much as I could (this was before I gave up boxing), but it never went beyond friendship. He looked up to me, I think — like a brother. That of course only made it worse for me.”

He looks away, runs a hand over the embroidered coverlet, lost for a moment in bittersweet memory. Ben, hoping he does not sound jealous or overeager, asks, “And...the other? Others?”

Hux gives a brief smile, although Ben can’t see it. “There were others,” he says, nodding. “One at Sandhurst — very brief, you know; we could have been expelled, they were very strict about that kind of thing — but we made do where we could. He was the one who taught me how to use my mouth.”

“He taught you well,” Ben blurts, looking up. Hux laughs, and he flushes, and Hux kisses him. “Was that all?” he asks when they break apart. “You said others.”

“In London. There were a few men, then. Rent boys, mostly,” Hux admits finally, and there is a note of disgust, or of shame at the disgust, in his voice as he says it. At last this most tarnished chapter of his past has been revealed. “I was...lonely, and growing desperate, feeling I would go mad for lack of human contact.” He shrugs, aware that he sounds callous: “And they were there.”

“Anyone else?”

"Jealous of my sordid past, are you?” Hux murmurs, scratching Ben’s scalp. “No, Ben. In the army, things aren’t as easy as at school; as they get older and move on with their _real_ lives, men will let far fewer things slide. I took my commission…three years ago, now, and there was no-one after that. There has been no-one since London. I promise you.”

Ben is annoyed and baffled at his own feeling of possessiveness, of anger at the lovers who had been with Hux — touched him, marked him, had him — before him. He has no right to this, he knows; they have hardly known each other three months; but he feels it all the same. _I want him, all of him._ “Thank you,” he says, quiet, half-ashamed. “I'm sorry to pry.”

“I understand.” Hux tips Ben’s face up to his and kisses him, deep. “I don't mind telling you. I want you to know.” He would not have thought this to be true before, but knows as he says it that, now, it is.

“I’ve never had anyone else,” Ben says. He moves up the bed to lie beside Hux again, their faces close together on a single pillow. From here he could count each of the freckles on Hux’s nose, or kiss them. “I know you knew that — I know you could tell — but I wanted to say it. There's never been anyone. Not a boy or a girl. I... I'd wanted to, with some people, but I never had.”

“What did you want to do, with them?” Hux murmurs. Despite their agreement, his hand moves, to run down Ben's thigh and settle between his legs. Ben shifts under his touch. “What did you think about?”

“Anything,” Ben admits, his breath catching when Hux brushes his fingers over the slowly-growing bulge in his trousers. “It...it didn't take much. You know.” He feels his face growing warm again. “Just the thought of someone's hands on me —”

“Like mine are now,” Hux supplies, caressing him again.

“Like yours are now,” Ben agrees bashfully. “But sometimes, other things — I wanted so much to be kissed,” he confesses, as if it were shameful. “I wanted to be held down and kissed all over, slowly, until I was crying out with the pleasure of it. I wanted to — oh — to take a man in my mouth, and have him tell me I was good —”

“Are you lying?” Hux demands, teasing. “Are you telling me what I want to hear?”

“No!” Ben protests. Hux's fingers are on his buttons, now. “No, no, I swear it — that first day, in the stables, it was like you knew...oh...”

Reckless, now, no longer caring, Hux has freed him from his trousers to take him in hand, stroking long and slow up and down his shaft. He strokes the sensitive ridge beneath the head and Ben lets out a shaking breath. “What else?” Hux murmurs, his fingers nimble on Ben's cock. “What else did you want?”

“I wanted to be taken," Ben confesses, his back arching as Hux changes his rhythm, tightens his grip. He thinks of the day he’d reached his breaking-point, that hottest summer night, and shivers all over with remembered desire. “Oh, Hux, I wanted it so badly. I've never — no-one else has ever known —”

“Shh,” Hux soothes him, when he breaks off in a cry. He moves, and bends his lips to Ben, now, kisses his cock lightly; Ben's fist flies to his own mouth to stifle another sound. “You've told me. I understand.” He runs his tongue up Ben's shaft, smiles at the urgent, restrained moan. “Would you like me to?” he whispers. “Could I do that for you?”

Ben's hand on his jaw, pulling him up to look at him. His eyes are wide. He takes his fist from his mouth. “Would you?” he asks, low.

Hux nods. “For you,” he says softly.

Ben’s face, so open, shows shock, and lust, and fear. “But not tonight,” he says, quickly. “Not yet. Not — I’m not ready.”

“Not tonight,” Hux agrees. “But one day. If you want me to, I will.”

“Thank you,” Ben breathes. And then he is tugging Hux up closer to him, and kissing him full on the mouth, messy and wondering, overwhelmed. After a moment, though, he pulls back again. “Hux,” he says, and Hux opens his eyes.

“Ben.”

“You…you want me, then.” Ben hates that he needs to keep asking, hates how badly he wants certainty: he has never known anything like this before, but can sense how easily it could be taken away.

Hux frowns. “I thought I’d made that clear by now,” he says gently, stroking a hand through Ben’s hair.

“Yes — you have — but I just need to be sure.” Ben can’t explain. “You’ve had others, and I’m not…I’m not like them, I don’t know how to do what they did for you. I’m not — special. I’m not anyone.”

He is less than that: he is loathsome, he is repellent, he is _tainted,_ and Hux knows none of this. But Ben has grown selfish; he _wants_ too badly to risk throwing it away. _He’ll know one day. Not yet._

“Ben. Don’t be absurd.” Hux pulls him close, kisses him. “I want you. I _have_ wanted you, practically since the day we met. What do I have to say so that you’ll believe me?”

“Nothing,” Ben says, abashed but comforted — for now. _He wants you, for now._ He ignores the cruel voice in his head. “Just…hold me,” he requests, to silence it. “Kiss me again.”

“Come here.”

How easy it is, Ben thinks, as his eyes drift closed, to believe Hux, when they are together like this, when he is in his arms. As soon as he is gone, the doubts return. This cannot last. Hux doesn’t want him. Ben is not worthy of his love, of anyone’s. Only one solution, then, a plea Ben knows he cannot voice.

_Stay with me, and never leave._

* * *

 

There is one last week of peace. On the twenty-eighth of July, Austria declares war on Serbia; on the first of August, Germany, on Russia. Hushed talk in town, wide eyes over the papers at the breakfast-table. Leia worries, privately. They all do. No-one will speak their worst fears aloud. Ireland is a distant memory, effaced: in Europe is the gathering storm.

But tonight, the fourth, is Finn’s twentieth birthday: a spot of light amid the growing shadows. They should have been in France, yes, but no matter, they will celebrate here; Rey and Poe have planned a garden-party for him, and enlisted the whole family to keep up the surprise. Luke has taken Finn into town with him, pleading his help with an errand, and all afternoon, Leia, Rey, Elsie, Cora, Arthur, Cecil, and Ben have been busy setting up. Ben and Arthur, the youngest and hardiest of the household, were tasked with dragging the long dining-table out onto the back lawn, and then a succession of chairs; Ben’s sleeves are rolled-up, but he is dripping with sweat all the same by the time the dozenth of them has been set up.

Rey is busy giving orders, but is not above hefting the enormous vases of flowers she’s had ordered up from town out the door, across the back lawn, and onto the table herself, leaving an astonished Cecil open-mouthed in her wake.

“Hurry up, now!” she calls to him. “They’ll be home any minute, and the lights still aren’t strung up.” She sets down her burden and hurries back to the house for more, her skirt trailing gaily behind her. Cecil shakes his head, mutters something about young ladies knowing their places, and then quickly returns to berating Arthur, tottering on a ladder, for his placement of the paper lanterns among the branches of the trees.

Finally, though, the first course has been laid out, along with iced pitchers of lemonade and the good china and silverware (at Rey’s insistence, backed strongly by Poe, that Finn should have only the best on his birthday, and every day, in fact.) And everything is ready not a moment too soon: Cecil, watching at the front door — relieved to escape from manual labour — hurries out to tell them that Masters Luke and Finn are coming up the drive.

“Places!” Rey cries; and obediently, the family and the staff, excepting Poe, all tuck themselves away, behind hedges and trees and dining-room chairs, and wait for her signal. And now Luke’s jolly greeting can be heard — “Why, hello, Rey, what’s all this?”, the twinkle in his eyes practically audible; and Poe and Rey, in chorus, exclaim, “Happy birthday, Finn!”

 Ben peeks out from his hiding-place and sees Rey flinging herself into Finn’s arms, and the look of absolute surprise and delight on his face. When Rey releases him, Poe embraces Finn next, and then the two of them link arms with him and near-drag him to the banquet table. “Surprise, darling!” Rey says exuberantly, sweeping her arm out to encompass the spread, and Leia, Ben, Elsie, and Cora, now popping their heads out from their various hiding spots.

“Happy birthday, Finn,” Leia says, going over to him before the rest of them and kissing him on both cheeks. “Did we fool you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Finn replies, still grinning. “I didn’t know _why_ Luke needed my help in town so badly, but I didn’t even imagine it’d be for a reason like this.” His hand drops to Rey’s, and he squeezes it: “I didn’t think anyone remembered.”

“Of course we did!” Rey sounds positively offended.

“How could we forget?” Poe rejoins.

Finn beams still wider. He has never had a birthday party in his life: despite having lived with Luke and Rey for years, he has always insisted that they never do anything big to celebrate, and so far, they never have. He has never thought he needed a whole day for himself, or even a fancy dinner; but as Poe steers him, now, to the head of the table, and he and Rey sit down on either side and, at the same time, grab both his hands and squeeze them, he begins to think that perhaps his birthday is something to celebrate after all.

The rest of the family take their seats — and Cora and Elsie too; Rey knows how much Finn likes and respects them, and it warms his heart to see them included. In no time at all food has made its way onto plates and drinks into glasses, and the air is still warm and the crickets chirp merrily, and the celebration is underway.

Finn serves himself cucumber salad and takes a warm hunk of bread from the basket, buttering it and taking a bite, savouring the fresh-baked taste. Rey pours lemonade for herself and Finn and Poe, and then passes the pitcher to Leia, chattering brightly about the morning she and Cora spent in the kitchen juicing the lemons, expressing her hope that it’s as good as Cora’s usually is. “I’m afraid I’m no good at all in the kitchen,” she says, merry and unconcerned. She takes a sip, and Finn smiles to see the look of delight on her face when she realises it’s good: “Oh, thank goodness, I haven’t ruined it after all!”

The main course is Finn’s favourite stuffed chicken. He scoops a hearty helping of roasted potatoes onto his plate, and passes the dish to Poe, who smiles at him. Down the table, Ben and Luke are deep in conversation, Ben’s fork held halfway to his mouth as he listens to something his uncle says, and then he roars with laughter as Luke finishes telling his joke. The carrot on his fork tumbles to his plate and the two of them laugh still harder.

Finn smiles, sipping his lemonade. All around him are the people he loves, his family; he has Rey and Poe to either side of him, and good food on his plate, and he is safe and happy. The summer is in full bloom and the countryside is splendid; he is glad not to be in London, and is surprised at how little he misses the city of his birth. What does London have to offer him now, he thinks — no Rey; no Poe; no Luke. London is not his life anymore — they are.

The meal spreads leisurely out for hours. The sky deepens, rich shades of coral and red, but the dark stays away. After the main course they have fruit and cheese, and then Cora disappears back into the house and returns beaming, bearing an enormous cake. Finn blushes to his toes, and stands when Rey and Poe bid him, grinning shyly as the table serenades him: _“Happy birthday to you…”_

It is as the cake is being served that Arthur comes scurrying out of the house, across the lawn, and stops short at Luke’s chair. Finn doesn’t notice the footman whispering in Luke’s ear, but Leia and Ben, on Luke’s either side, stop their conversation short. As Arthur delivers his message, a frown appears on Luke’s face; and then he stands, and says, “I’ll be back.”

Leia and Ben watch as Luke follows Arthur back inside, hurriedly traversing the lawn and disappearing inside the servants’ back door. Ben turns to his mother, and a silent question passes between them; Leia shrugs, and then turns to accept the piece of cake passed to her by Elsie. Ben takes a plate, too, and slices off a bite with the side of his fork. He watches Finn, Rey, and Poe laughing together, clinking forks as they try the cake, and he tries to forget the look of apprehension on his uncle’s face as the footman delivered his news.

He has nearly done so by the time dessert is finished. More wine is being poured when the back door opens again and Luke reappears. Leia, taking a drink, abruptly sets down her glass when she sees a yellow paper clutched in her brother’s hand.

Luke crosses the lawn in long strides. Even from a distance, the worry on his face is apparent; Ben notices his mother freezing at his side, and follows her gaze to his uncle; and then, one by one, the table falls silent and all heads swivel to Luke, Rey and Finn’s laughter dying last. Poe’s forehead creases as he looks over at his future father-in-law. The table is utterly silent by the time Luke reaches it.

“Papa?” Rey asks, uncertain. The mood of the evening is no longer so gay: a sense of apprehension hangs over the party.

“I’ve just had a telegram,” Luke announces grimly. “From Reg, in London. Belgium has been invaded.”

 He lays the wire on the table, and at once everyone crowds around to read it.

As they take in the news, Rey gives a gasp, pressing her hand to her mouth; Poe makes a low, worried sound; Finn closes his eyes as if to un-read it. Leia looks up at her brother, and he frowns down at her, their expressions of fear identical. Ben alone is unmoving, staring at the few and awful words on the page and feeling his skin grow cold.

_BRITAIN SUPPORTING FRANCE,_ Reg has written. _WE ARE AT WAR WITH GERMANY._

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I'm like this. Come yell at me [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com)!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for graphic-ish descriptions of a car accident as well as a mentioned suicide attempt, both of which happened in the past.

* * *

 

Almost at once, the enlistments begin. Young men from the village pour out to the hastily-established recruiting stations en masse; traffic is blocked-up in town by the crowds that spill into the street. At Millennium House, trouble brews.

“I should go,” Ben argues with his mother on Friday the seventh, after Britain has been at war for three days. They have had this discussion once a day since then, and neither of them will budge from their positions. “Everyone else is joining up, and I’m of age, I’m healthy. Why shouldn’t I?”

“There are professional soldiers who can fight this war,” Leia says, again, her tone far less patient than it had been on Wednesday. “There’s no need for you to leave. You’ve never had any interest in the army, for God’s sake — why, all at once, is it your calling?”

“I never said it was,” Ben snaps. “But there’s a _war_ on! Everyone is going! What will it look like, if I stay behind?”

“It’ll look like you’ve made a sensible choice, instead of rushing headlong into something you don’t want and don’t need to do,” Leia retorts calmly. “Honestly, Ben — you spent years fighting with your father, persuading him that the army wasn’t your place. What’s changed?”

 _Everything,_ Ben wants to scream. Ever since the declaration, he has lived in terror. Hux and his father have returned to London, their foreign assets in certain peril now, but that is far from Ben’s concern. Instead of engaged, Ben now fears that Hux will return from London enlisted — and if he is called away, Ben wants to go with him.

“Maybe now I can finally respect Dad’s wishes,” Ben answers her sharply. “I disappointed him enough while he was alive; it’s taken me this long, but this is my chance to make things right —”

 _“Enough,_ Ben! Don’t talk like that!” Leia’s voice is a whip-crack. Her eyes flash. “Your father loved you. He didn’t always understand you or your dreams, but you were not a disappointment to him. And you don’t need to go to _war_ to prove yourself to him, after he’s been dead for months!” She shakes her head, incensed. “I won’t hear any more of this. You’re not going.”

“They’re not sending anyone overseas until they’re nineteen. I’d be in England for months yet, until November at least.” Ben’s final protest is sulky, weak.

_“No.”_

And that is that. Leia glowers at her son until he pushes back his chair and tramps up to his room, defeated. He doesn’t believe her, saying that he hadn’t disappointed Han — she hadn’t been there, that day with the guns — but still, deep down, he is almost relieved. There was a reason he’d fought with Han for so many years, on the matter of the army: he is _not_ cut out for that life, Ben knows, not the way that Hux is, and he wouldn’t fare well in combat. Even shooting with Hux makes him nervous; the thought of killing another person, even to spare himself, makes him queasy. It may make him a coward, but if Leia won’t let him enlist — and the government won’t force him to — then, in the end, Ben will be glad not to go.

Or he would be, at least, if Hux wasn’t almost sure to.

Since he has been in London, Ben has not heard from him. They left in a hurry — Hux dropped by to explain, say he was sorry, and kiss the side of Ben’s mouth, quickly, with no-one around — and did not say when they’d be back. Ben gathers that the situation is serious, that they may lose a fair amount from their already-dwindling estate. But this, he thinks, will hardly matter, if Hux is called to war — and why should he not be?

He can only hope that it will not be soon. The war, they are saying already, will be over by Christmas, a straightforward, tidy affair. With luck, Ben thinks, Hux could be home all autumn, waiting until they need him.

He spends the remaining days of Hux’s absence much as he had the last one, thinking of him constantly, distracted from his work by fantasies of him (based more firmly in reality, now.) But, unbelievably, his nightmares return. He had thought these weeks of joy had banished them for good; but they are back, and so too is the guilt, the heavy feeling of _wrong_ that he had carried on his back from the day of the accident until just a few short weeks ago. He wakes panting in the night, tears streaking his face, and he wishes to cease to exist, just as he’d wished it after Han’s death.

Barring that, though, he wishes for Hux. He has not felt like this since they have embarked on their affair. It is a clear equation. He needs Hux: he does not know if he can go on without him, not if this is the price that he pays for his absence. And Hux is going away.

All told, a week passes, in which more and more young men join up: what seems half the town, by now. But Ben stays at home, ashamed of the relief which comes with his mother’s insistence — but, too, half-mad with worry, with the feeling of impending doom.

On the fourteenth, though, this tormented interlude comes to an end. Early in the afternoon, the doorbell rings.

“Hello, Cecil.” Almost as soon as Cecil opened the door, Ben had hurried from his room. The sound of Hux’s voice from the foyer proves his hopes correct. “Is Ben at home?”

“I’m here,” Ben calls down the stairs as Cecil opens his mouth to reply. “You’re back,” he greets him, dismissing Cecil with a look. “I wondered when you would be.” When the old butler has gone (sniffing slightly, his nose in the air), Ben steps forward, quickly, and makes to embrace Hux — but Hux stops him. His face is serious.

“What is it?” Ben asks, his desperate excitement faltering. “Did something happen in London? Is everything all right at home?”

“Well — no.” Hux rubs one hand over his forehead, looking pained. “But that’s not why I’ve come. I had to return from London early. Ben…” He takes a deep breath.

Ben’s heart drops. His anticipation is instantly replaced with a coldness. He feels fear, twisting and knotting in the pit of his stomach, and knows what he’s going to say before he says it. _No. No. Please, no, not yet…_

Hux looks him in the eyes. “I got a telegram this morning. I’ve been called to join my regiment.”

Ben’s reply is immediate, unthinking. “You can’t.”

“Ben, we’ve talked about this,” Hux says calmly. “You know I have to. It’s my duty, it’s my career —”

“They can’t need you yet! I heard in town that they’ve got plenty of officers, that the ranks are _full._ Surely your regiment’s no different, they must have enough men —”

 _“Ben._ They’ve called me up. I have to go,” Hux says sternly. “To ignore my orders would be desertion. _Treason._ They’re stationed at Shorncliffe and they leave for France in a week.” He squares his shoulders. “I’m going.”

Ben’s mouth drops open in shock. “You’re not — a _week,_ Hux! In France, in a week! The battalion in town doesn’t ship out for _months_ yet, how can you — not France —”

“The men in town are in the other ranks,” Hux reminds him. “They have to go through training, they’ll be stuck on English soil for months. I’ll be on the front lines right away.” His spine is straight, there is pride in his voice.

But Ben is distraught. All of the past week’s fears are coming true before his eyes.

“You’ll be in _danger_ right away! Real combat, Hux, in a few _days!_ You can’t,” he insists, stepping closer to him, grabbing his shoulders. “Don’t go. Don’t go with your regiment — stay here, join the battalion in the village — and I’ll come with you,” he suggests frantically. “Come _on,_ Hux! We’ll go right now. Come on.” And he grabs Hux’s arm, tries to drag him to the door.

“Ben,” Hux says firmly, not budging. “I’m going up to Shorncliffe tomorrow; I’ve already bought the train ticket. I can’t stay here.”

“No _,_ ” Ben insists, dogged, manic. “We’re going into the village. I’m going to join up. If you’re going, then I am too.”

“Ben,” Hux says warningly; but he lets himself be taken outside, and reluctantly climbs into the waiting carriage. “Into town,” he tells the driver, once Ben, radiating impatient desperation, has thrown his lanky body into the seat beside him. He hopes he can talk Ben out of it on the drive into town, but for now he says, “To the recruitment office, please.” Just days ago, Hux thinks, if he was going to the same place he would’ve asked instead for the grammar school. _Already the war has changed things._

It starts to rain on their way there. Ben drums his feet on the carriage floor, flexes his hands in his lap; when Hux tries to dissuade him again, “Why not sleep on it a night, you’re being hasty,” he snaps, “I’ve made up my mind.” Hux doesn’t try to talk again, and they pass the ride in silence.

 _What have I done?_ Hux thinks, looking at Ben’s angular profile, his eyes burning with a dark fire. _This is my fault, all of it. He’ll get himself killed, and all because of me._

His thoughts grow darker still as they ride into town, and by the time the carriage stops down the block from the grammar school (they can get no closer, for a foaming mass of young men takes up the pavement and the road), Hux has a carefully-prepared argument on his lips, ready to convince Ben that he’s being foolish and drag him back home if he has to. He reaches for his sleeve as they get out of the carriage, but Ben shakes him off and stalks up to join the queue.

Hux hurries to follow him. The line stretches out in front for ages; all around is the rowdy chatter of young soldiers-to-be, boasting about the Huns they’re going to kill, speculating as to whether they’ll get to see combat right away. The mood, overall, is almost frenetically gleeful. Hux would join in the cheer if not for his worries about Ben. He tries to talk to him again — “Come on, Ben, we’ll be here for ages; why not go home, give it some thought, and come back tomorrow?” — but is answered with a hard glare:

“Because you’ll be gone tomorrow, and I intend to go with you.” Ben sets his jaw and will not speak again.

By some miracle _(or perhaps a curse,_ thinks Hux), the endless queue moves quickly. Soon enough they are off the street, inside the school’s humble foyer — the smell of pine and floor-wax brings Hux back to his earliest schooldays for a brief, dizzy moment — and then minutes later they are through the doors of the small gymnasium, stuffed to bursting with men; and now one of the recruiters is calling, hurriedly, _“Next!”,_ and Ben is going over to his table.

Hux doesn’t follow. He realises he was stupid to have stayed in line all this time, after it became clear that Ben wouldn’t listen to reason, and so he quickly sidesteps out of the queue. Laughter rises up from the men behind as he goes to stand and wait for Ben, as out of the way as he can be in this crush: “Changed your mind, then, Red? Not got the guts for it after all?” jeers a man from behind him, snickering.

Hux turns on him and says icily, “You’re speaking to a commissioned officer. I’d suggest you watch your tone, _Private.”_

The man’s eyes widen. The others around him roar with laughter as he fumbles a hurried, improper salute, and then relief washes over his reddened face as a recruiter calls him over. Hux turns to look — and sees Ben stalking away from the same table, looking murderous. “I’m sorry, son,” calls the recruiter, a grizzled HAC man, from the table, “but there’s nothing we can do.”

“Go to hell,” Ben says fiercely over his shoulder, and strides out of the gymnasium without even looking at Hux. A wave of interested heads turn to watch him go, murmurs rising up from the buzzing crowd. Frowning, Hux hurries out the doors and jogs after him: Ben pushes through the crowded lobby, shoving men aside with his bulk and eliciting angry shouts from the tightly-packed mob. Hux follows the path he’s blazed and pushes his way out the front doors, still swinging from Ben’s exit.

“Ben!” he calls, stepping out into what has become a downpour and wincing. “Ben, _wait!_ What’s happened? What did they say?” Running halfway down the block after his rapidly retreating form, he finally catches up to him and grabs his arm.

“I’m American,” Ben says bitterly, whirling to face him. “I’m not a citizen. They won’t let me enlist.”

Hux is inexpressibly relieved. He shields his face with his other arm and drags Ben into a covered alleyway, out of the driving rain. “Ben,” he begins cautiously, feeling the fury rolling off him in waves, “that’s a good thing, you’ll see. It’ll be better off for you to stay at home — why, you leave for Oxford in two months. You won’t have to interrupt your studies.”

 _“Damn_ my studies!” Ben shouts. His dampened hair is stuck to his forehead and he shoves it back with one furious hand. “I won’t stay home reading _Shakespeare_ while you go and put yourself in harm’s way,” he rails. “You could _die_ out there, Hux, and what’ll I be doing? _Nothing!”_

“You’ll be keeping yourself safe!” Hux shouts back, his own anger flaring hotter to match Ben’s. “I’d rather have you do nothing at home and survive, than come with me and die some bloody fool’s death by my side! Why don’t you understand that this is not a game? I’m a _soldier,_ I’ve trained my whole life for this; I have to go. You’re lucky,” he insists. “Lucky, Ben, that you’re not being called to die for your country — to kill for it! Do you think you could kill a man? Or ten men? A hundred? Could you look them in the eyes as you took their lives?” he asks, hard, merciless. _He needs to understand._

“I’d kill for you,” Ben insists, his voice ragged. His eyes burn, they are frightening, a demon’s or a saint’s. “I’d kill ten thousand men for you, and laugh as I watched them die! _I_ _want to go with you._ If I die, I die at your side.”

This stops Hux in his tracks. Finally, after a long moment made of glass:

“You’re a fool,” Hux breathes. Ben’s words have shaken him to his core; he cannot let him see so. “A fool, Ben, an utter fool. You’re asking to throw your life away. Be grateful they won’t let you. They’re letting you _live.”_

“I’d rather die than live without you!” Ben bursts out in fury.

Their eyes lock. Silence slams abruptly down between them; the rain pours on, relentless, streaming down the cobbled streets. Hux stares at him, and feels something overwhelming, too big for either of them. It will crush them, he knows, with a sudden and terrible certainty — this lust, this love, whatever it is. _I’d rather die. I’d rather die._

“I won’t let you,” Hux says finally, low. “I won’t.”

Ben gives a wordless sputtered hiss. He turns his back on Hux and takes long, angry strides away: “Wait! Ben!” Hux shouts after him. “The carriage — damn it, Ben, it’s raining, come _back!”_

“Don’t follow me,” Ben spits over his shoulder. He hunches his shoulders to the wind and goes.

 _“Ben!”_ Hux shouts uselessly; he has crossed the square; soon he will be out of sight. Hux curses under his breath. _Later. I’ll speak to him later. He’ll understand; he has to._ He finds the parked carriage, climbs up sopping wet, defeated, and tells the bewildered driver, “Home.”

 

* * *

 

Ben arrives at Millennium House nearly two hours later, drenched to the skin and freezing cold. The front doors slam shut behind him; he stands in the entryway and squeezes his eyes shut. His head is a muddle of anger and cold, fear and despair. He is trying not to collapse outright when he hears the pounding of feet on the floor: he opens his eyes. Rey comes barrelling around the corner, followed at once by Luke, Leia, and Finn. Rey reaches him first, gripping his forearms and exclaiming _“Ben!”_ in a tone of horror.

Leia follows her niece to his side. There is exhaustion in her eyes. “Ben,” she says, her voice brittle. “Where were you? We were worried sick — we had no idea where you’d gone, and the storm — did something happen? Cecil told us Hux came, and then the two of you left without saying where you were going — where is he?”

“Hux,” Ben murmurs. “At — at home, by now. I left him.”

“What happened?” his mother asks, clasping his hand. “Where did you go?”

“Into town. To enlist,” Ben says.

 _“What?”_ Leia breathes. “Ben — Ben, _no,_ I told you, you won’t go —”

“I can’t,” Ben interrupts her harshly. “I _can’t._ I’m not a citizen. They won’t let me go.” His mouth twists. He sees the naked relief on his mother’s face, and his anger surges through him again; it had been numbed, dulled on the walk home, but now returns hot and fierce. He shivers bodily, and his uncle sees:

“Let’s bring him inside,” Luke directs quickly, and goes over to his nephew, begins to lead him in the direction of the parlour — but Ben shakes off his hand.

“No,” he says, his anger sharpening his senses back to clarity. _“No,”_ he insists fiercely, when Leia too tries to shepherd him, murmuring soothing words. “Leave me alone, I want to be alone — leave me _alone!”_ he explodes, striking out with his arms. All four of them step back, and before they can catch him Ben is off to the staircase, stumbling a little on cold-stiffened limbs, but climbing the stairs as fast as he is able. He feels nothing but the burning desire to fall into sleep, to forget. _To slow down time. To stop it._

“Ben!” Rey cries after him, and he hears her running feet on the floor — but then the steps stop abruptly, and Luke tells his daughter, “Leave him.” That is all Ben hears before he’s reached his bedroom and slammed the door behind him, the sound ringing in his ears.

He stumbles to his bed, throws himself on it, and curls into a tight ball, quivering with cold and rage. His sodden hair and clothing soak the bed-clothes; he lies amid the wet, and shivers, sobbing violent, shaking sobs. He knows he has been foolish, to think he had more time with Hux. They have known, all along, that their time together must come to an end; it was only that they’d hoped it would end with Oxford, and not war.

_Tomorrow._

They have one last night together. The thought of it makes Ben’s throat close up: _so soon, too soon._ He rolls onto his side and stares blankly ahead.

 _I will go to him, tonight._ He has no choice. He will cling to every moment they have remaining.

He must doze — fitful dreams — for he is awoken by a soft knock at his door.

“Leave me alone,” he says at once, his voice hoarse, but his mother pushes it open and steps inside anyway, her expression careful.

“Ben, Hux is back,” she tells him gently. “Come down and see him.”

Ben goes. Leia disappears, back to the family at supper, leaving them alone.

Hux stands in the foyer with his head bowed, his hands clasped behind him, looking a soldier already — he has always looked like this, always borne himself this way, but oh, how much it matters now. He looks up when he hears Ben coming down the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” Hux says immediately. “Ben, I’m so sorry — I shouldn’t have left you. I should have followed, made you come home.”

Ben steps onto the marble floor and comes no closer to him. “Not your fault.”

“Are you all right? Are you ill? The rain was freezing, I thought for certain you’d catch cold.” Hux takes a tentative step closer, his eyes pleading; for what, Ben does not know.

Ben shakes his head. “No. Not yet.” Monosyllables, no more; he does not know what he can manage, what he will be allowed to say before his grief and rage overtake him again and steal his voice. “Why have you come?”

“We’re having a dinner.” Hux looks awkward, now, abashed. “My father’s idea. To see me off. Nothing big,” he adds, when Ben looks up, wary. “Just my father and me — and you. If you’ll come.” He clears his throat; his voice is a soft supplication. “I’d like you to.”

Ben’s first reaction is to tell him no: to punish him for leaving at all by refusing to see him off, refusing to accept that he is going — to celebrate it, no less. But immediately he knows that he will regret it if he doesn’t go, if he denies himself these last hours with him, even separated by the long table, his father’s presence, the heavy weight of all they cannot say. All they have not time to say, not anymore.

He nods, tight, small. “I’ll come.”

Relief breaks across Hux’s face. “Thank you,” he says, and steps closer still; Ben lets him. He lays one hand on Ben’s arm and strokes it, gently, before bringing it back down by his side.

Ben changes and washes his face, tells his mother where he’s going, and then follows Hux into the gathering night, back to the waiting carriage. He climbs up after Hux and says an embarrassed hello to the driver, remembering his earlier state. The ride is short; it has begun to rain again, a lighter drizzle after this morning’s storm, which had stopped while Ben was asleep.

Inside the foyer Ben hands his coat to Hux, who hangs it in the closet himself, and then they proceed into the parlour. Brendon Huxley Sr. sits in a leather chair in the corner, a cloud of cigar smoke hanging about him as he pages through the evening news. A tumbler of brandy and a half-empty bottle sit on the table at his side, and as Ben and Hux come in — seeming not to notice that he does it, his eyes never leaving his page — the earl sets down his cigar, picks up the bottle, and tips more liquor into his unemptied glass. He raises it to his lips as he turns the page. Hux clears his throat.

“Hello, Father,” he says stiffly. “Ben’s here.”

The earl glances up. “Supper isn’t ready.” He goes back to his paper and lifts his cigar to his lips. The smoke is acrid, heavy.

Hux’s eyes narrow at his father’s rudeness. He seems about to say something, but thinks better of it; straightening his back slightly, he goes to the drinks cabinet, and asks Ben, “Would you like a drink?”

“Whatever you’re having,” Ben replies. He is already uncomfortable — Hux’s father cold and unwelcoming, the smoke making his eyes sting, the grandfather clock in the corner too loud, ticking away their last hours.

“I’m afraid it’s only lemonade.”

“Fine by me.” Ben is relieved: he still can’t drink alcohol without tasting that other, lingering bitterness in the back of his throat, the memory of the darkest night of his life.

Hux returns with two short glasses; Ben takes a sip and finds the lemonade almost too tart to be pleasant. Hux sits down on the chesterfield and Ben sits at his side. Brendon Huxley continues reading his paper, not talking to either of them.

 _Your King and Country need you,_ says the _Daily Mail’s_ headline in assured type. Beneath the underlined subtitle _A CALL TO ARMS,_ the article declares that _An addition of 100,000 men to His Majesty’s Regular Army is immediately necessary in the present grave National Emergency…_

Reading the words, Ben bites his lip _._ He sips reluctantly at his drink and stares at the paper as if to crumple it with his gaze.

Hux notices the line of his stare: immediately he frowns. “Father,” he says coolly, “we have a guest. You might be polite and leave the news for later.”

“I’ll do as I like in my own home, boy,” Brendon Huxley retorts, “and I’ll thank you to recall that you’re not yet master of the house.” He glares, cold, at him.

Hux stares back for a tense moment — a silent battle is fought, of which Ben does not know the victor — and then he turns away. He seems about to say something, to apologise to Ben, perhaps, when suddenly comes the welcome apparition of the footman at the parlour door: “Dinner is served.”

Hux’s father sits at the head of the table, his paper and cigar left behind in the parlour (but the brandy decidedly not). Ben takes a seat across from Hux and sits in nervous silence as the first course is brought out. “This looks delicious,” he says to the same footman, who now serves him his soup, not forgetting his manners; but he receives only a sniff in response. He bends his head, abashed, to his bowl.

“The rain has started again,” Hux says with forced indifference, after several agonising minutes of silence, during which his father has drained a third glass of brandy and poured himself, with clumsy hands, a fourth. “We’ll have a storm tonight.”

“Yes,” Ben agrees, speaking too loudly, as the first course is cleared and the roast is brought out. He slices off a piece of meat and promptly burns his tongue. “My mother was growing worried for her garden. The rain will do it good.”

“Not so good for the boys at the front,” the earl speaks up. His tone is almost accusatory, never mind the fact that rain in England does not mean rain in Belgium.

Ben swallows, feeling this reminder of Hux’s going like a glancing blow. “No, sir. Not good at all.”

Silence falls again, heavier, more fraught this time. The rain drums on the roof. Ben cuts his meat methodically and eats it without tasting a bite, his knife and fork scraping painfully on his plate; the earl saws off gristly chunks and chews them with little grace. Hux clears his plate quickly, and then sits motionless with his hands in his lap, his eyes flickering. The minutes stretch by without end.

The plates are removed and dessert is brought out. The storm outside has worsened; the wind howls in the eaves. “It’s gotten worse out there,” Hux comments, breaking the awful silence once again. He glances at Ben. “Perhaps it would be safer for Ben to spend the night.”

 _Yes. Yes. Please, yes._ The ache in Ben’s chest — the rift in his heart that widens with each minute they spend in this limbo — seems to lessen. He nods: “That would be wise,” he replies, too quickly. Hux’s eyes warn him. “I…shouldn’t want to risk the trip back in this storm.”

“It’s decided, then.” Their eyes meet again: Ben hopes his gratitude shows on his face. Hux presses his napkin to his lips. “Another drink, Ben?”

“No, thank you,” he replies. He sets down his spoon and pushes his half-empty plate away. The footman steps in at once to clear it. “Thank you for the meal,” he adds, halfway addressing his words to Brendon, as master of the house; but it’s Hux who replies:

“It was our pleasure,” he says smoothly. They all three know how far this is from the truth. Hux pushes back his chair. “Well, it’s getting late, and I have an early start tomorrow. I think I’m for bed.”

“Me as well,” Ben agrees, too quickly, and winces, glancing at Brendon; the earl, however, is occupied in pouring himself what must now be his sixth tumbler of liquor. The bottle is close to empty.

“Come along, then,” Hux offers, as perfectly casual as if he were playing a part. “I’ll show you to a guest room. Your parents won’t worry?”

“It’s too late to send a note. They’ll understand.” Ben speaks his own lines.

“Very well.” Hux stands; Ben stands with him. “Goodnight, Father,” he says. “My taxi-cab comes at six. Don’t feel obliged to say goodbye.”

Even to Ben’s ears this sounds harsh. The earl gives a noncommittal grunt in return, and says icily, “Wire when you arrive.”

Hux gives no reply. “Come, Ben,” he says, turning his back on his father and leaving the dining-room, the set of this horrid play, behind.

Ben follows. Hux goes quickly up the stairs, speeding his pace as soon as they’re out of Brendon’s earshot. Ben catches up to him, lays a hand on his arm in concern, about to ask if something is wrong, if he and his father are always like this — but Hux turns to him, and the look in his eyes silences the question on Ben’s lips.

They pass the door of Hux’s room: Ben almost stops before he remembers. At the end of the hall, Hux opens the door to another room, and shows Ben inside. Just as at Ben’s house, they are on their guard: “Here,” he says, too loudly. “You can sleep here tonight. There should be pyjamas in the wardrobe.”

“Thank you,” Ben replies, in the same artificial tone. “I appreciate it.”

“I’ll leave you.” As he steps past Ben on the threshold, Hux murmurs, “He’ll be asleep by eleven, even if he doesn’t come upstairs.” He raises his eyebrows: Ben understands.

He nods. “Goodnight, then,” he says aloud.

“Goodnight.” Hux smiles, briefly, and then he is gone, down the hall to his own room. Ben watches him go, and then shuts the door.

He does not change his clothing: he does not like the thought of going to Hux in borrowed clothes. He washes his hands and face at the washstand in the corner — the dinner has left him feeling somehow unclean — and then, unsure what else to do, he sits down on the bed to wait. There is an ornate clock on the desk, but its hands have stopped at half-past three. _Limbo, still._

Finally the other clocks’ bells chime eleven. Ben had heard, some moments before, the earl’s heavy tread coming up the stairs, his puffing breathing and unsteady steps; he’d heard a door, far off, open and then slam shut. In the hall, the lights are out. Only the moon gives any light, and even that is made faint by the persistent storm.

Ben waits a few moments more, and then — hearing nothing — he goes to him.

Hux locks the door behind him. In silence they go to his bed, their lips meeting, hushing any words they might have said: neither of them wants to hear them. They kiss, deep, desperate; somehow they feel that the longer they touch, the longer this night will last; perhaps after all it will never have to end.

Ben feels almost sick with it, the knowledge that this is the end. There is so much they have not done, so much he hasn’t said. When he remembers this, his chest clenches painfully. Does he tell Hux now — tell him everything — or let him go to war, and perhaps die, never knowing the truth?

This last would be kinder; the dishonesty makes Ben’s stomach turn. He must know.

Ben pulls back, finally, and looks Hux in the eyes. "Hux," he begins, and then stops.

“Yes? What is it?"

“I should tell you,” Ben says, quiet, stumbling. “Before you go. I — you should know something.”

 _Just in case,_ he doesn’t say, but Hux understands. He frowns. “What’s wrong?”

Ben sighs, heavily, and seems to shrink away from Hux as he turns his face to the window, to the storm. He goes silent.

“What? What is it?” Hux lays a hand on his shoulder, growing worried. “Ben, please — I won’t be angry, whatever it is. You can trust me, you know that.”

“You’ll never look at me the same,” Ben says bluntly, shrugging off Hux’s hand. “No-one ever does.”

Hux’s brows draw down farther. “Why? Why not? Please, Ben, just tell me; you’re frightening me.”

Ben’s lips compress into a tight line, his jaw working for a moment, as if the secret, whatever it is, is physically fighting to try and get out. Finally, though, he opens his mouth and expels it, or begins to:

“We moved here because of me.”

“Yes,” Hux says uncertainly when Ben pauses, expectant. “I — I know that. Because your mother and uncle thought it would be good for you to have a change of scene, after what happened with your father — they found you a place at Oxford —”

“That’s not all.” Ben’s gaze is fixed resolutely on the window, or on the night sky outside: anywhere but Hux. “We left because my father died. Because I — I killed him.”

Hux blinks, stunned. His first reaction is a strange and bitter envy. He tamps it down, disgusted with himself, and says tentatively, “What do you mean, Ben? I thought — I thought it was an auto accident?”

“I was driving.” Ben’s voice is bleak. He shifts onto his side and curls into himself, his voice muffled by the pillow, so that Hux has to lean over to hear his next mumbled words. “The bridge was icy. It was snowing hard, I couldn’t see. The car was new; I wasn’t used to it. We slid. I lost control.”

He seems to cocoon even tighter into himself, as if every word cuts a new and bleeding wound that he is trying in vain to stanch. “We hit the railing, going fast. The car spun — his side was hit, and the windscreen shattered, and the flying glass cut my face. My father was crushed between the car and the rails. He died on impact.”

Ben raises his head, now, and tears streak his scarred face. “I survived.”

“Ben.” Instantly Hux moves to him, to take his hand, grasp it. “That doesn’t mean you killed him. It was an accident; you’re not to blame. It could have happened to anyone.”

“I insisted on driving.” Ben’s voice is empty. “I wanted to practise. My father said the weather was too bad, but I argued and argued; he was angry with me for pressing, I know, but we had to get to the dinner on time, so finally he relented. If I hadn’t persisted he would have driven. There would have been no accident. He would still be alive.”

 _And you would not be here with me,_ Hux thinks, but knows he cannot voice this selfishness aloud. “Or not,” he suggests, carefully. “It could still have happened the same way, regardless of who was driving. It could have been _you_ in the passenger seat,” he adds. “Don’t feel guilty. Be grateful for your life. Surely he would want you to.”

Finally Ben turns to look at him, and his big eyes are full of tears. “After the accident I didn’t want to go on,” he says, barely a whisper. “I couldn’t stand to live with what I’d done. So I tried — I tried to die,” he says, blunt, raw. “I drank laudanum mixed with the last of his whisky. I fell asleep and I hoped I’d never wake up. My mother found me — the hospital —”

He breaks off in a choking sob. Hux, aching with this revelation, reaches for him, and Ben collapses into his arms, clutching fiercely at him as he cries hot tears against his chest.

“You did wake up,” Hux says quietly. He holds him tightly, one hand stroking his thick hair, feeling the desperate heat of his body. “You did wake up, and now you’re here, and I’m here, too.”

“You’re leaving me,” Ben whispers, anguished, into Hux’s neck.

“But you won’t lose me. You won’t. I promise you.”

Ben moans quietly. He raises his head, his features blurred by tears but the scar standing out angry and red, and crushes his mouth to Hux’s, urgent and pitiful. Hux opens his mouth and tastes salt as they kiss.

Ben reaches down to the buttons of Hux’s pyjamas. Hux, startled, does not stop him. He takes off his own pyjama-jacket, and watches as Ben discards his. They slide out of their trousers, exchanging fervent kisses in between, and then Ben pulls at Hux’s drawers. “Off,” he requests, almost begs. “Take them off. I want —”

What it is, he cannot say. Hux strips down for him. Ben removes his own drawers too, and they are bare together, their cocks going hard as they kiss. Outside, the storm rages terribly, rattling the windowpanes like an insistent ghost. Ben climbs into Hux’s lap, hungry, greedy, and sucks at his lip, as if to take poison from a wound into his own veins. His nipples are stiff against Hux’s chest; their cocks rub together in their laps; Hux pulls back and asks him, half-dizzy, “What do you want?”

Ben knows his answer, now. “I want you inside me. Please.”

Hux takes a breath. They have talked about this, but still — this is the line never to be crossed — this is the act that separates lonely men from those _others._ After this there is no coming back.

Ben is watching him. “Please,” he repeats.

Hux nods. “Yes. Yes.”

Ben exhales a shaking breath, at this, and his eyes shine too brightly, with fear, with guilt, with lust. “How?” he whispers, almost cowed, as if he hadn’t truly expected his request to be granted. “How do we —?”

It has been years, but Hux has not forgotten. “On your hands and knees,” he replies slowly, “or else — your back.”

“I want to see you.” Ben’s reply is instant.

“Your back, then.”

Ben complies. He lies back and looks up at Hux: such vulnerability, such trust, it nearly breaks Hux’s heart.

 _For me,_ he thinks, and _how, why — why has he chosen me?_

Something threatens to collapse inside his chest; he has to look away.  “Wait a moment,” Hux murmurs. He gets up from bed and goes to where his kit is stacked, neatly, at the bedroom door, ready to be collected next morning and brought away with him. He rummages through the pockets of his bag until he finds the small jar of Vaseline that they have been instructed to bring with them, in the event they lack rifle-oil when they first arrive at the front. He brings it back to bed.

“Why?” Ben whispers, looking at the tin.

“It’ll help,” Hux tells him. “Help me not to hurt you.” _You should know by now that that is the last thing I want,_ he thinks but cannot say. “Can I touch you?”

Ben nods.

“Spread your legs.”

Ben does. He watches Hux with wide and liquid eyes; his heart is a trapped bird behind his ribs.

“Relax,” Hux tells him. Hux coats his fingers in the waxy jelly and then brings them between Ben’s legs, which part further of their own accord. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Ben whispers.

Hux slides the tip of one finger inside him. Immediately Ben clenches, gasps — “Does it hurt?” Hux asks him, stilling at once — and Ben nods, his face screwed-up. “Do you want me to stop?”

Ben shakes his head.

Slowly, Hux pushes further in. He feels him relax around him, after the initial shock has faded.

“I’m fine,” Ben says. His chest rises and falls too quickly, his cock lies flushed against his stomach. He breathes, strained, and says, “More, Hux.”

“Are you sure?”

“More. Another. Please.”

Hux yields. It takes moments, but with utmost care, he opens Ben with two more fingers, eliciting soft groans and gasps from him. “Tell me when it hurts,” he instructs him, but Ben remains steadfast, and never cries out.

Ben shifts to adjust, relaxes as much as he can, and feels himself stretched and bare and _open._ He shivers. “More,” he requests, after several minutes, as Hux moves his fingers so gently inside of him. “More, Hux. I’m ready. I want — I want you.”

“You’re certain?” Hux pauses, looks up at him. Their eyes meet. Ben nods.

Hux withdraws his fingers: Ben gives a soft moan. Hux reaches again for the Vaseline, and spreads it on his cock. Ben watches with a new, astonished hunger.

When Hux has prepared himself, he kneels between Ben’s thighs. He pauses there, and looks down at him; he reaches out and cups Ben’s face in his hand, strokes his thumb over his cheek. Ben closes his eyes and leans into the touch. “Sweet thing,” Hux says softly, his chest tight.

Ben opens his eyes again. “Fuck me,” he says quietly. “Let me feel you.” He swallows; Hux can see his throat working; and his eyes all at once are bright, are wet. “If this — if this is our last —” he begins, struggling.

Hux stops his words with a kiss. “Hush. Hush, Ben. Don’t think of that.” He kisses him again. “Are you ready?”

Again Ben nods.

Hux straddles him, and pushes inside.

Ben opens his mouth in a cry, his eyes squeezing shut, and at once Hux’s hand is on his lips, stifling the sound. “Shh,” he murmurs. “We must be careful. Does it hurt? Am I hurting you?”

Ben shakes his head. Hux takes his hand from his mouth. Slowly, he rocks into him, carefully going deeper. Ben is tense under him: “Relax,” Hux tells him, stroking one hand over his shoulder, his thigh; and at his touch, Ben seems to loosen, the strain on his face melting away. “You feel good, Ben. You feel so good for me.”

“I can feel you,” Ben murmurs, his words slurring, his eyes closed. “I can feel you inside me. I want —”

Anticipating, Hux thrusts, carefully, into him, and draws out slightly again. Ben gasps, harsh. “Yes,” he says. “Like that. Oh — like that.”

He had never known it would feel like this. For all he has imagined it — being under Hux like this, being taken, possessed completely by him — he had not thought it would be this way: Hux’s face so tender above him, lightly flushed with sex; his lithe slim body pressed all against Ben’s; and this heat inside of him, filling him, making him whole. As Hux thrusts into him again, so careful, so slow, Ben remembers that this may be the last time they can be together like this, and he feels a welling in his chest.

A sound of pain must escape him, for Hux stills at once. “Did I hurt you?”

“No. No, it’s not — I’m not —” Ben is overwhelmed. He closes his eyes tight, he bites his lip hard to stifle a sob; Hux looks down at him, at the dark brows drawn together, and asks again, urgent, sad, “What is it?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Don’t stop, Hux, please — don’t stop.” When Ben opens his eyes they are wet.

And so Hux makes love to him: there is nothing else he can do. Ben’s legs come around him, bringing him deeper inside, and between their bodies he wraps his hand around his cock and strokes it feebly, his body weak. Hux kisses his mouth, his face, his closed eyes, and when Ben comes, his nails dig into Hux’s back as he exhales his name on a ragged, broken breath. Hux follows him soon after, and then draws slowly out of Ben, and holds him.

Ben is weeping silent bitter tears. He clings to Hux, his shoulders shaking. Hux strokes his skin and whispers softly to him, but there is nothing he can say that will forestall the inevitable.

They fall asleep clutched together with the desperation of the dying.

 

* * *

 

Too soon the morning comes. Hux rises early, with the sun, and performs his daily ablutions as quietly as he can so as not to wake Ben, who sleeps with a deep frown on his face, as vulnerable as Hux has ever seen him. Looking at him breaks his heart. Hux dresses in khaki and, for the first time, resents the uniform.

Ben wakes just as Hux is checking his things, ensuring he has all the supplies he needs for the trip to Shorncliffe and then on to France. He has not had time to buy trench-gear: he will send to London for it later, or else buy it in France once he’s settled. He sets down his haversack, having stowed one last book inside — he foresees having to ward off chatter on the train — and then turns around to find Ben sitting up in bed, watching him. He doesn’t have to speak; his eyes tell all his pain.

“Hello,” Hux says, quietly. He goes to the bed, sits down, kisses him: Ben’s eyes flutter shut the same as if he’d slapped him. “Did you sleep well?”

“Nightmares,” Ben says, and it is true: this time it was not his father, dead, he saw, but Hux.

Hux strokes his cheek. “I’m sorry.” Ben only kisses him again: the words hurt.

“I have to go,” Hux says finally, pulling back. “The cab comes in twenty minutes. Come down and eat.”

Ben gets up, and dresses in yesterday’s clothes; they both know Brendon will not notice. He sees, for the first time, that Hux is in uniform, and his mouth tugs down at the corners as he takes it in.

“I know,” Hux says. He gives a minute shrug, shouldering his kit to take it downstairs — and then he pauses, remembering. “Hold on,” he says, quickly, and he goes to the drawer of his bureau. He opens it and extracts something, and then comes back over to Ben and presses it into his palm. “I want you to have this.”

Ben opens his hand and finds a key. He looks up at Hux, confused.

“For the drawer where I keep the Webley,” Hux explains, almost shy, gesturing to the desk. “I won’t be using it, so I want you to have it while I’m gone. For safekeeping. You can practise with it, if you’d like.”

“Oh,” Ben says, surprised. “I — are you sure? I know it’s important to you.” He hesitates, looking like he wants to hand it back.

“So are you,” Hux tells him. Ben flushes, at this, and stows the key in his pocket with ears flaming.

They go downstairs. The cook is awake — as is Mitaka.

Inwardly Hux groans. He has forgotten to tell Ben, but now there is no avoiding it. Currently the little footman is sitting at the base of the stairs, dressed in a uniform that fits him ill, his bags all piled around him; he jumps up at the sound of Ben and Hux’s tread coming down the stairs, and snaps an awkward salute:

“Sir,” he addresses Hux, wobbling in a haphazard military stance.

“Good morning,” Hux says curtly. “Cut that out, we’re not on duty yet.”

“Yes, sir.” Mitaka drops his hand with a look of relief.

As they make their way into the dining room (Mitaka scurrying ahead), Ben turns and frowns deeply at Hux, uncomprehending. “What’s he doing?” he says, suspicion audible in his tone. “Why is he in uniform, too? Has he enlisted?”

“He’s coming with me,” Hux says, reluctant.

Ben’s eyes widen, and he opens his mouth to protest, violently — but Hux holds up a hand as they enter the morning-room. They take their seats and are served tea and toast: all Hux had requested for this morning, seeing no point in having a full breakfast. He had known his stomach would be unsettled, and so it is. He waves Mitaka back out: “If you’ve eaten, go get whatever else you need. The cab will be here soon.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ben waits until he has left the room before he turns on Hux. _“He’s going with you?”_

“Ben, please.” Hux speaks calmly, taking a bite of his toast as Ben stares at him, eyes wild. “I’ll need a servant. He’s of age and he wanted to go. He’ll be somewhat safer, with me, and more comfortable. I saw no reason not to offer him the chance.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ben has not touched his food. There is hurt in his eyes, a fragility in the indignant set of his full mouth.

Hux sighs, again. “I didn’t think of it,” he says honestly. “What with — what happened, yesterday, when I came over to tell you, and then the evening, it completely slipped my mind. It was only decided on our last morning in London, when I got my orders; I hadn’t been keeping it from you. I promise,” he says, when Ben looks unconvinced. “Please believe me.”

Ben shakes his head. The thought of Hux, alone among the other men — faceless, nameless, meaning nothing to Ben — had almost been bearable; he is a soldier, this is his life, his career. But now a familiar face to go with him — Mitaka, this snivelling, wide-eyed nobody, to be at the front with Hux, when Ben cannot! His right hand is clenched into a fist, his arm shaking. Hux notices, and lays his hand on him.

“There is nothing between us, nor will there ever be,” Hux promises, his voice low, looking around him to ensure they are not overheard. “I know what you’re thinking, Ben, and I’m telling you, there is nothing to fear. He is not even a friend — a servant only. That’s all.”

“But he’ll be with you,” Ben says. “He’ll see you, and I won’t. For who knows how long.”

He speaks the truth, simple and unavoidable. Hux averts his gaze, ashamed. “Yes,” he says. “I know.” He sees now how Ben feels betrayed.

The grim silence between them is broken by the appearance of a figure in the doorway. Hux looks up, expecting Mitaka — but finds, instead, his father.

Brendon Huxley’s nose is red, his eyes are deeply bagged. He looks rougher, even, than Hux has seen him of late. When he looks between Hux and Ben — sitting close together but with a heaviness between them — his face betrays nothing.

 _He’s awake,_ Hux thinks, stunned. And then: _He wants to say goodbye._

Father and son regard each other in silence a moment, absorbing the strangeness of the situation. And then: “Your taxi is here,” says Brendon, gruffly.

“Thank you.” As if moving through treacle, Hux rises, and Ben with him. Brendon’s eyes flick to Ben without interest.

Like a funeral party, the four of them make their way out the door and to the gates: Brendon, Mitaka, Hux, Ben. Mitaka struggles under the weight of his packs, his round face growing red, but Hux does not offer to share the burden: he will have to learn, in time. At the foot of the drive the cab waits.

By unspoken agreement, Mitaka goes up first, handing his luggage to the driver to stow and then clambering into the back. The door slams. Ben and Hux are left alone with his father; Ben steps back to give them a moment.

“So,” Hux says, if only to break the silence that still hangs between them, as it has for the past twelve years. “I’m off, then.”

“Have a safe trip.” Brendon’s voice is low, his words almost unwilling. But he looks his son square in the eye, and repeats himself, more clearly: “Take care of yourself.”

“I’ll try,” Hux responds. He is irritable, annoyed that his father should choose now to intrude, when he had counted on a private farewell with Ben; but at the same time, he is almost touched, in a pitying way that makes his skin cold. “I’ll send a wire when I arrive in France.”

Brendon nods. Hux hovers, unsure if this is all he has to say — and then Brendon speaks again.

“You’re all I have left, boy. Remember that.”

This is, Hux thinks, the closest his father has ever come to telling him he loves him. Mutely, he nods, and then — hardly knowing what he does — he steps forward and hugs his father, briefly, awkward. Brendon stiffens in surprise, and then one arm wraps tentatively around his son’s back. Hux ignores the constriction in his throat.

They step back. Another look, and then Brendon nods, and turns back to the house. He stumps back up the drive — the old leg wound had not healed well, his gait forever changed — and Hux watches until he disappears back inside.

Then he turns to Ben, who has stood motionless all this while. Hux can hardly bear to step close to him. Ben closes the little space between them, and takes him in his arms: Hux hears the half-sobbed exhale as they wrap their arms around each other.

Hux rests his chin on Ben’s shoulder, his eyes closed, and breathes deep of the smell of him, trying to memorise it. Ben holds him the way he did last night, as if they are at the end of the world.

They have to break apart: Mitaka, the cabbie. When they do, Ben’s eyes shine with tears, and Hux feels a pricking in his own as well. _Don’t cry. Don’t cry._

“Goodbye,” he says, his voice thick. “For now. I’ll — I’ll write. As soon as I can.”

“When will you be back?”

Hux shakes his head. “There’s no way to be sure. I’ll try and get leave quickly, but so will everyone else. It could be — weeks.” He stops himself from saying _months,_ sure that Ben would crumple. “But you know what they’ve been saying. This should all be over quickly, and then I’ll be home for good.” He manages a smile, and reaches down, quickly, to squeeze Ben’s hand.

Ben holds on. “Come back,” he says, hoarse. “Come back to me.”

“I will.” Hux stares at him, at the mismatched face that has grown so dear, and feels something swelling in his chest. It is all he can do not to kiss him, not to send the cabbie away and stay here, with Ben, forever. _I have a duty._

The cabbie grows impatient: the klaxon shatters the fraught air between them. Mitaka leans out the car window to say anxiously, “Sir, the train…”

Their time is up. Ben’s grip on Hux’s hand tightens, and then he lets go. Hux picks up his bags again and goes to load them into the boot. He opens the door, but lingers, standing. Ben’s eyes never leave him.

“Come on, then, we don’t have all day.” The cabbie’s voice is harsh.

“I’m sorry.” Hux sits down, closes the door. He looks out the window: _I love you,_ Ben mouths, and Hux feels light-headed. He cannot say anything back, and hopes that Ben understands.

The engine turns over; the cab gathers speed and drives away. Hux twists to look out the window, and stays that way even after the grounds of Huxley Hall have long disappeared from his view, and Ben with them.

 

* * *

 

Ben walks home from Huxley Hall with tears blurring his vision. When he gets to his own front door he opens it before Cecil can, brushes past the alarmed butler without a word, and goes straight up to his room and locks the door. He falls onto his bed, buries his face in his pillow, and sobs.

“Is Ben home?” Leia asks Cecil, poking her head into the foyer. “I thought I heard the door.”

“Yes, my lady, but…” Cecil casts an anxious glance up the stairs, and Leia understands.

“We’ll leave him.”

Somehow Leia hadn’t been surprised when Ben didn’t come home from dinner at the Huxleys’ last night — nor had she worried, correctly assuming that, because of the storm, he’d simply stayed the night. But she had also been expecting something like this when he did, eventually, return.

That thought — that Ben is acting like Rey on days when Poe can’t come to see her — flits through her mind again, and is even more incongruous now: not only in its essential absurdity, but in that Rey has never caused such a scene over Poe. For Ben to be this distressed over the departure of a mere friend, even a close one…

 _The accident,_ Leia thinks. _He’s been fragile, since then._

She puts it down to that, thanks Cecil, and goes back to her day.

Ben does not come down until suppertime. When the gong sounds, he descends the stairs slowly; he is wearing evening-dress, but his hair is mussed and his eyes are swollen and shadowed. He enters the dining-room like a ghost, to find it full of chatter and laughter. The cause: Poe Dameron, seated between Rey and Finn, the object of both their glowing gazes.

But the happy buzz in the room stops at once with Ben’s entry. Leia, twisting in her seat to ask something of Archie the footman, turns back around when silence falls. A frown creases her brow when she sees her son’s wan, lost look.

“Good evening, Ben,” she speaks up, as no-one else will. “Are you feeling better? I’m happy you’ve joined us.”

“Thank you,” Ben says. He goes to take the one remaining seat, across from Poe, and thanks Archie dimly when he lays his napkin across his lap. He looks down at the food in front of him as if confronting a plan of battle, and then, uncertainly, picks up his spoon.

Slowly, chatter resumes. Rey, hesitant, turns her gaze across the table, and asks her father, perhaps a little loudly, how was his day; and Poe turns to Finn and quickly strikes up a chat about the car, would he like to come driving again sometime soon; and soon the conversations overlap and intermingle, and Ben’s silence goes unnoticed.

It is as the second course is being cleared that things begin to derail.

Ben still has not spoken a word; even his mother has let him be, not asking him what’s wrong, not trying to draw him out to talk. Sometimes, she knows, he will simply shut himself off like this, and it’s better to let him ride it out than to force him out of it. But now, he puts an abrupt end to his self-imposed isolation.

Ben leans across the table, and in a voice that’s low but clear, says to Poe Dameron, “Why haven’t you gone?”

Poe breaks off mid-sentence, turning from Rey to give Ben a kind but bewildered look, his brows creasing. “I’m sorry?”

Ben pushes a lock of hair back from his eyes. “Why haven’t you joined up yet? Everyone is going.” He says _everyone_ as if it means _Hux,_ which it does.

Poe looks surprised, but, of course, maintains his easy composure as he answers, “I’m already in the Flying Corps. They haven’t called for me, yet. That’s the only reason.”

Rey and Finn exchange a glance. Poe has implied that, should the RFC need him, he will go, but he has painted this as a distant possibility; the two of them have been secure in their feeling that he will perhaps not leave at all. To hear him now say _the only reason_ gives them both pause.

“And if they don’t call for you? Will you go?” Ben’s tone is unpleasant, leading nowhere good. “None of the men who’ve joined up in the village have waited to be called up. They’ve gone of their own volition.”

“They’re in the other ranks,” Poe explains, handling Ben’s pointed questions with perfect tact. “There’s been a general call for volunteers, so they’ve answered. But I’m an officer; I’ll wait for orders from the top.” He smiles, placatory, but Ben is not satisfied:

“Plenty of men have already gotten those orders.”

All at once Leia understands whence this venom comes. She leans forward, reaching to lay a hand on Ben’s arm, opening her mouth to request that he back down, but Ben is already speaking over her.

“I don’t see why so many should already have gone, when you’re still here, relaxing with your fiancée and acting like there isn’t even a war on. There are men in the trenches, by now; there’s already been fighting, men have already _died —_ and here you are, a commissioned officer, totally unaffected! That’s not fair. That’s not _right._ You should be ashamed.”

 These last words are delivered with a spitting violence that Ben has never turned on Poe before: that most of the table, excepting Leia, have never heard from him. The effect is immediate — Poe’s eyes widen as he tries to think of something to say; Rey’s mouth drops wide-open; Finn and Luke only frown, deeply concerned. Leia rises from her chair, plants her hands palms-down on the table, and levels her son with a severe, uncompromising look.

“Apologise to our guest,” she says, low, dangerous. _“Now,_ Benjamin.”

Ben stands, too, shoving back his chair and nearly knocking over Archie, who is hovering with the pudding. “I won’t,” Ben tells his mother, his voice nearly shaking with anger. “He should be gone. He should have left, instead of —”

He breaks off abruptly. After a tense, charged instant, the feeling of a further storm about to break, Ben turns on his heel and stalks from the room. Leia makes to follow, her face like thunder, but Luke stops her with a hand on her arm: “Leave him,” he says. “He’s not himself. Give him some time.”

Leia sighs. She sits back down, and motions to Archie to continue pouring coffee and serving pudding. “I’m so sorry, Poe,” she says to him. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

“It’s all right, Lady Leia,” Poe assures her. “Things are rather chaotic right now, and what with Ben’s not being able to go, and now Huxley leaving — he’s upset. I understand. There’s no harm done.”

He smiles, and Leia seems to relax; but the rest of the meal is subdued. Rey especially looks worried, a line never disappearing from between her brows. After pudding, Poe rises and says his goodnights, and Rey and Finn walk him to the door, each kissing him goodbye. And then Rey, shutting the door, sighs, and says, “I should go talk to him.”

“Shall I come with you?” Finn offers. He sympathises with Ben: of late he, too, has been wondering what will happen, should Poe have to go and he himself not be needed — or wanted — by the army.

Rey shakes her head. “That’s all right. He probably won’t even want to speak with me, but I think I ought to try — to let him know we aren’t angry, and that he can talk to me, if he needs to.” The look in her eyes tells Finn that she understands what he does, too, about Ben and Huxley.

Finn nods. “I’ll be back in the dining-room, then. Good luck.” He kisses her, and she goes.

“Ben?” Rey’s knock is soft. When she hears what might be a grunt of acknowledgement from inside, she pushes open Ben’s door.

He’s seated at his escritoire, his dinner-jacket flung to the floor and his sketchbook open in front of him. When he turns to her, there is a smudge of charcoal on his face, smearing down his right cheek in a mirror of the scar on his left. “What?”

“Are you all right?” Rey closes the door and comes to sit on his bed, folding her hands in her lap. “I was worried. We all were.”

“I’m fine,” Ben says shortly. He turns slightly away from her and picks up his charcoal again, returning to shading in his lines with force. It doesn’t seem to be a dismissal, though: after a moment, he says, gruff, “Is Poe angry?”

“No,” Rey hurries to assure him. “Oh, no. He’s gone, now, but he said to tell you there were no hard feelings. He understands the stress you’re under.”

Ben makes a noncommittal sound. He continues to draw; from here, Rey has no idea what it is, but his lines are harsh and sweeping, and there is no colour in the piece. Drawing how he feels, she supposes, and feels a pang of empathy for her volatile cousin.

“I would feel the same,” she says, after another moment.

Ben looks up, puzzled. His hand stills on the page.

“If Poe had to go. Or Finn.” Rey nods to his work. “I’d feel…like that. Like you do.” Her eyes meet his dark ones, and she wills him to see: _I understand. I know what he is to you._ “I’m sorry he had to go so soon.”

Ben’s fingers tighten around the stick of charcoal; for a second it seems he will snap it, and then he lets go. His shoulders slump slightly, and the hard, angry set of his frame softens. “Thank you,” he mutters. “I am, too.” He pauses a second. “I hope they don’t. Don’t have to go.”

Rey looks at him, softly. “Thank you for saying so.” She sighs; her fears collect around her, like moths drawn to a light. “But there’s no way of knowing, is there? We just have to wait and see.”

She rises from his bed, needing, suddenly, to be with Finn, to reassure herself. “Goodnight, Ben,” Rey says, pausing at his side to lay a hand on his arm. “I’m here if you need me.”

“Goodnight.” Ben allows her to kiss his cheek, light as air; and then she slips out, quietly shutting the door, leaving him to his work and his thoughts.

That night, he does not sleep alone. The loneliness that had been his bedfellow for all his eighteen years, until a few short — too-short — weeks ago, slips between the covers with him, and cradles him in its familiar arms.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I first heard [Guilty Party](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71xmrULJ-ms) by the National while writing Ben and Hux's night together, and it really ups the misery of that scene, if that's what floats your boat. I'm on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com).


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for period-typical racist attitudes (no slurs are used); also for truly soap-opera levels of melodramatic backstory revelations, which I'm sure you've all seen coming by now.

* * *

 

_23 August 1914  
Somewhere in the Channel_

_Dear Ben,_

_I’m writing this on a ship in the middle of the night. We crossed from S—_ _. some hours ago; they’re only sending two hundred men across at a time, so it’s taking ages to get all of us, but we’ll make it to France eventually. I’m sorry I haven’t written before now. It was an endless train ride out and then a hectic few days in Shorncliffe, meeting up with the regiment, buying our kit, sorting out rifles and uniforms and all that — supplies have been delayed and we are running short; I probably shouldn’t be telling you that — but I’m back with men I know and it’s rather good to see everyone again._

_The whole town turned out to see us off, or at least it felt that way — lots of flag-waving, anthem-singing, kiss-blowing and the like. Boys hanging out the troop-train window promising their girls they’ll be home for Christmas; and with any luck, they will be. Have been hearing rumours about what it’s like out there; we’ve been making advances but things seem to have slowed up a little. Can’t say much more, I’m afraid — one never knows when the Boche might be listening._

_I’m terribly sleepy and my light is bad — the table keeps rocking, the water’s a bit rough here; excuse the blotches. There’s another fellow wanting to use the lamp before it burns out — giving me rather dirty looks whenever I pause in my writing — so I suppose I should wrap up for now. Will write or wire again as soon as I can._

_I miss you already._

_Ever yours,_

_Hux._

 

* * *

 

_29 August 1914  
B—_ _., France_

_Well, at long last we’ve arrived, and France is doing its utmost to make it feel like home for us — rain, rain, and more rain. It was very dry and hot right before we arrived, or so we’ve been told. Already the BEF have clashed with the Germans, near someplace called M—. The fighting started while we were making our crossing and — damn! — has already ended, with our retreat. One hopes that future engagements will not be wrapped up so quickly, or none of us will ever have any fun…_

_For now we’ve settled in the village of B—., the officers in a farmhouse, the other ranks in the barn; it’s clean enough, and there’s plenty of food, and most importantly it’s_ dry. _But this will only be a few days’ respite before we are up and marching, or so we are told, at least. We parade in the mornings in the village square, with all the little boys flocking round wide-eyed, and then have drills twice a day and lectures in the evening. (I’m to give said lecture tomorrow evening — on riflery, if you can believe it — I miss the Webley already. Take good care of it.)_

_We have plenty of time to ourselves, which would be much nicer if the weather would improve; but oh well, I have time to read, and to write to you, of course. If you’ve finished that book you were slogging through last month, the one by the Frenchman, you might send it — I know you didn’t like it, but it was_ long, _and I’ve nearly gone through all the books that I brought with me. Words, words, words._

_Write soon; send a drawing, too, if you want. I still haven’t seen any of them, did you know? I should very much like to._

_Yours,_

_Hux._

 

* * *

 

The two weeks that follow their departure from Boulogne blur into a haze that, once it’s passed, Hux can hardly remember. Endless marching, what seems retracing every step they have taken since disembarking from the ship that brought them here; the weather is alternately fiendishly hot (blisters in boots, parched lips, cardboard tongues) and miserably damp (sodden clothing, mouldy socks, shivering that shakes one’s very bones.) The BEF’s great success at Mons — against impossible odds; there are whispers in the ranks of soldier-angels who saved the day — was followed by ignominious defeat at Le Cateau, the bloom plucked from the bloody rose. Hux and his men neither engendered nor witnessed this rout, but they retreat from it all the same. Such is war.

August turns to September, and both sides make gains only to lose them. Cities and towns are seized and then stolen again, if they have not been razed to the ground — and yet as the march continues, here are farmers and children, racing to hand flags to the Tommies and cheering in French; here are sheep in the fields and the sun in the sky, and this great khaki beast like a worm in the apple. The papers will later call this the _Race to the Sea_ but there is no water in sight, nor is their progress by any means speedy. Some of the men sleep as they walk, kept upright by the buoying sway of their comrades’ steps. Is this war?

By the second week of September the Germans have staked their claim on the high ground: they dig trenches near the river Aisne. The British retreat is halted, they stop their march and set up camp; Hux still feels the road beneath his feet, even when he sleeps. Their orders go out — they will have trenches, too.

Four hundred fifty men take six hours to dig one. There are to be three lines, front, support, and reserve, and they are carved out of fields of wheat and grain by frowning soldiers with their shovels, many of whom are farmers at home and feel this destruction acutely. As he joins in the upheaval of the earth, Hux understands fully that this war will not be like the wars that have come before. They are building these trenches to last.

During a respite in the digging one night, Hux goes off to have a cigarette, stretching his aching back and lighting the fag with stiff, shovel-blistered fingers. The other men pair off to smoke but he prefers to be alone. He closes his eyes, feeling tobacco-smoke filling his lungs, and blows a cloud into the cooling evening air. He wonders if he will ever feel anything but tired again.

He had begun writing a letter to Ben earlier today, before the digging began. He takes it out of his pocket now, and begins to read through the few hastily-scrawled lines, frowning at certain phrases, making mental notes of what will have to be reworded or obscured, lest the censors omit it for him. He has begun to draft the rest of the letter in his head when he is pulled from his thoughts by a call of his name.

 “Lieutenant Huxley,” someone says, and Hux looks up to find a strange and unexpected vision. Before him stands the stooped but formidable figure of the division commander, Major-General Alistair Snow, his mangled face lit eerily by the lantern grasped in his right hand.

Snow is a veteran of the Boer, with a chest full of medals and a battle-disfigured face to prove it. He had been one of Hux’s instructors at Sandhurst, and had recommended him for a place with his own first regiment, the Northamptonshires, upon his graduation. He’s the closest thing Hux has to a mentor, although he wouldn’t dare go so far as to call himself Snow’s protégé — but he is satisfied in knowing that Snow has singled him out on merit alone, for he does not know Hux’s father.

Upon his appearance, Hux drops his cigarette to crush it beneath his heel, and snaps out a perfect salute with the hand not holding the letter:

“Sir.”

“At ease, Huxley.” Snow motions for Hux to rest, and stumps closer to him, leaning heavily on his walking-stick. “Writing to your girl back home?” he asks indifferently, indicating Hux’s letter.

“Something like that, sir.” Quickly Hux re-folds the paper and slides it back into his pocket. He’ll finish writing it, find an envelope, and send if off tomorrow; tonight’s post has already gone. “What brings you from behind the lines? I shouldn’t have thought HQ could spare you.”

“HQ has been established in the village here,” Snow answers, his voice, as ever, sounding like it’s been trapped underground for thousands of years. Decades of smoking cigars and barking orders day and night will do that to a man. “I heard you and your men were hereabouts. Your platoon is all in order, I trust?”

“Yes, sir,” Hux nods. He’s not yet well-acquainted with his men, only the other officers, whom he knew from before the war; but in the little time they’ve spent together, they’ve kept their billets clean, followed his orders, and not been too late to drills. How things might change once they’ve moved into the trenches, he doesn’t know, but he has no serious concerns so far; and he tells Snow all of this, receiving taciturn nods in return.

“Very well, then,” Snow says. “Work on the trenches will be completed tonight, and you’ll occupy them tomorrow morning, by nine hundred hours promptly. Be prepared to dig your heels in.”

Hux is surprised. At the rate the men have been working, the officers had not expected the trenches to be finished for another two or three nights yet, and no-one has been thinking further ahead than getting them hewn-out, much less reinforcing, furnishing, supplying, and peopling them. But then, it is a soldier’s lot to never be certain of anything beyond his present moment: Hux learned this long ago.

And orders are orders; so Hux nods. “All right, sir. We’ll be ready. Promptly.” He salutes again.

“Good man.” There might be a trace of amusement on Snow’s face. He returns the salute, and then turns his back on Hux and disappears, the circle of lantern-light swinging as he goes.

_Into the line. Tomorrow._ Hux sighs, flexing his fingers, preparing to take up his shovel again. He’ll have to tell the men, get them to double their speed; they have a long night of work ahead of them, and an early start in the morning. _Unto the breach._

 

* * *

 

Their very first stint in the very first trenches is comprised of strange new behaviours that soon become routine. They stand-to in the early morning — the queer trepidation of peering over the parapet, rifles ready, and then the near-inevitable onset of boredom, as the Germans, just as cautious as they are in the bright light of the morning, neither fire at nor shell them. Occasionally one of their marksmen will try and pick off a man, but it is so easy to see them that they can duck out of the way long before the bullet reaches the British trench. Hux has to tell off those fools who stick their heads above the parapet, tempting fate sorely.

After stand-to is breakfast: dry Pearl biscuits and tinned beef or vegetable stew; bacon, if they’re lucky, fried in mess-tins over small fires. Tea, watery and unpleasant-looking, but at least warm — it may still be summer, but already the mornings take on an autumn chill. There is a rum ration, if you want it, which everyone but Hux always does. He can’t smell the stuff (black, thick as treacle) without thinking of his father.

And after breakfast — nothing. The officers have the most to do — reports to write, inquiries from HQ to answer, men to shepherd about — but even that amounts to very little, a handful of hours in the day. The rest of the time: cleaning the rifles which are so rarely used; further constructing and repairing the trench, a temporary structure which is quickly becoming permanent, establishing itself as a new feature of the landscape. There is always sentry duty, and then, mostly, sleeping, in funk-holes in the trench wall or, for the officers, the cramped and lumpy cots in their dugout, which serves as office, kitchen, parlour, and communal bedchamber. It is furnished rather handsomely with bunks, a wooden table, several chairs, an oil lamp, and a bookshelf, and cordoned off from the main trench by a curtain which can be tied to the side — the physical symbol of the officer-enlisted divide.

They are shelled occasionally, mostly at night, but there have been no casualties yet. Plenty of time to write letters, but so little to write about.

The night is when their real work begins: when parties on both sides are sent out on reconnaissance patrols (the logic of doing recce in the dark is questionable at best, but there’s no use arguing with the army); or to lay down lines of barbed wire that zigzag across the expanse between both sides’ trenches, quickly dubbed No-Man’s Land; or to dig saps shooting off from the main trench like the limbs of some ungainly beast, hoping not to get shot or shelled all the while. It’s fiddly, stressful work — bullets whizzing, shells popping all around you — but at least it’s work at all.

How soon the novelty of trench life has worn off. Already Hux wishes for battle, for heavier shelling, for _something_ to make him feel like he’s at war and not wasting his time: time he could have spent with Ben.

“Stand-to!” Hux calls briskly to his sleeping men, at 4.30 on what will turn out to be their last morning in the front line. As every morning, they all groan and fumble blearily for their weapons. The men who have been out on night patrols mutter the most darkly under their breath as the whole lot of them, every man in the trench, make their way to the fire-step. Hux cocks his gun and, with the trench’s three other platoon commanders, is the first to peer over the top.

The sun has not yet risen. A heavy fog clings to the leaf-shedding trees, the blue-grey sky; clouds linger on the horizon, reminders of last night’s drizzling rain. Inside the trench all is just damp enough to be unpleasant. No-Man’s Land looks deceptively innocent, a field of wheat trampled and flattened by men’s boots and the rain. An unlucky corpse, picked off last night, lingers in the middle, too far afield for either side to retrieve until dark falls.

As he surveys the scene, Hux imagines, as he always does, his German counterparts on the other side of the lines, doing exactly what they do now. _We’re both hoping for the same thing,_ he thinks, as he has before. _We both want this to be over. We both want to go home, and soon._

But home — although it is less than a hundred miles away — remains a distant dream for both sides. Hux scans the leave-list in his head and recalls his own name still five or six men from the top. He sighs: he’s been here less than a month, but he is restless and displeased. He can feel the war sucking him in already, and he wants out before it’s too late. _Soon. Late next month, perhaps._ He’ll write to Ben.

All is silent. The sun is beginning to rise. Hux nods to the other officers at his sides: “Stand down,” comes the command. The men disperse, off to fetch their breakfasts from the ration-bags brought up overnight; in no time at all comes the scent of bacon frying, the slight haze of blue smoke. Hux lingers a moment, looking over the line, and then steps down.

“Morning, sir,” the men greet him as he passes, and he nods to each of them. He knows all their names, by now: there is Kitteridge, Mayville, Alcott, Green. _Eighteen, eighteen, twenty, nineteen._ Too young. Hux returns to the officers’ dugout and settles down with a stack of letters to censor.

Soon after he’s sat down, a new private comes in with another pile of mail: HQ’s reports and requests for the day, and more letters from the men, freshly written and collected by the runner. Hux thanks him and pages through HQ’s matters, sighing inwardly and setting them aside to be dealt with later.

It is only as he finishes with the previous letters and reaches for the first of the new that he realises what today is.

_20 September,_ the author of the first letter has marked at the top of the page. _20 September. Somewhere in France. Dear Sophie…_

The twentieth of September. Hux is twenty-four years old today.

He sets the letter down, struck. He had completely forgotten: the days at the front have all blurred together, and he’s never made much of his birthday anyway; but what a singular one it is, this year. The last time he’d celebrated it had been in London, with a crowd of acquaintances in a bar he didn’t like, and too many glasses of bad champagne. That had been twenty-one. He was a different man, then, he thinks.

And now here he is, in a wretched, water-logged hole in the ground. No champagne, even poor stuff. Perhaps the Boches will shell them tonight: fireworks for the party.

He bends back to his work. The men all say the same thing in their letters —  _am safe, eating well, clean enough, not dead yet._ Only that last is really true. Some of them can hardly spell: Hux figures that if he can’t read it, then Fritz won’t manage, either. Dear Mother, Dear Father, Dear Sweetheart.

Despite the strange pathos of their farewell, he hasn’t written to his own father in weeks. A telegram when they got to France, as he’d promised, and two words in reply: _Received wire._ A letter or two, when the march had stopped long enough to allow for post to be sent out; but then Hux realised that he had nothing to say to him, and likely wouldn’t get anything in return. A waste of paper and postage, better used on Ben.

He hurries to finish the men’s letters, skimming a little, perhaps, in order to get to his own correspondence. He knows he has been lax in replying to Ben. His most recent letter came three days ago — nothing much new at home; Rey’s had her first wedding-dress fitting, Luke and Leia say hello — but Hux and all the others have been working day and night for a week now, to build the trench, to stock it with supplies, to keep their men alive. He has not had time to think, much less to write; but today, he decides, he finally will. _I must._

But after the last of the letters, a runner drops by with another batch of inquiries from headquarters; and then he’s called down from the dugout to resolve a dispute between two of his men; and then it’s time for inspections, and a shift of sentry duty, and to his displeasure it is hours until he’s sitting down again, back in the dugout at last. He has told no-one it’s his birthday.

“Sometimes I do hate it, being in a quiet part of the line,” another officer, Carlton, tells Hux as they clean their rifles (still one more thing to be done). Hux had been thoroughly irritated to find another man in the dugout when he arrived, and is rather hoping Carlton will have to rush off to his own sentry shift or something equally urgent; but here he remains, and he won’t be quiet, either. “Rumour has it they’re preparing for a push near Mons, but that won’t reach us here.”

“Shame,” Hux says idly, screwing the lid back on his Vaseline. (They were right about the rifle-oil, at least.) He rummages through the mess on the officers’ shared table to find a clean sheet of paper and starts inking his pen.

Carlton gives a shrug, oblivious to Hux’s attempt to disengage from the conversation. “It is, rather. It feels wrong to wish for it — we’re going to be killing people, even if they are only Germans — but it gets so _dull,_ waiting around. The least they could do is give us a show; we haven’t been shelled in days.”

Hux half-smiles to himself; Carlton doesn’t see. “It’s not been quite what we expected.” He can’t write with Carlton still sitting here: he may as well leave it for later. He sets his pen aside and rises, stretches, bends to fix one puttee. “I’m going to make a pot of tea. D’you need anything?”

“A smoke, if you’ve got one.” A cigarette and match change hands; the flame flares to life. “Cheers.”

As Hux is on the way back to the dugout with the tin teapot in one hand, he is stopped by one of his non-coms: Weir, Hux thinks, a lance-corporal from Towcester. He is ordinarily a rather sour-faced lad, but now there is a smile upon his pinched lips. Its origin soon becomes apparent:

“Sir,” Weir says, saluting, “I’ve been sent to let you know that we’re being relieved tonight.”

“Finally.” It has only been a week, but every day feels ten times longer. “We’ll go into support, then?”

Weir shakes his head, beaming now, an expression of which Hux had not previously thought him capable. “All the way behind the lines. Back to billets for us.”

Hux’s eyebrows shoot up. “Splendid,” he says, and even returns Weir’s smile. He thinks briefly of Snow, and dismisses any boyish hopes of favour before they can fully form. “Spread the word, would you? Tell the men to start getting in order. We’ll want to make it quick.”

“Yes, sir.” Weir salutes again and jogs off, a spring in his step.

Hux exhales. They don’t _need_ the rest, per se, for his men have been lucky: despite their griping and wishing for a fight, they all know they have been blessed to have been spared from combat so far. And now they will be further removed, safely ensconced behind the lines for at least a day or three. _A happy birthday indeed._

 The rest of the evening passes quickly with the news: the men are cheerful at supper, toasting each other with mess-tins of glutinous stew. Hux goes on sentry duty again, more nervous than usual — something _would_ happen now, just hours before a reprieve — but all is clear and silent. His platoon is relieved from their digging and carrying duties and spend the remaining hours packing their things and cleaning the trench, on Hux’s orders and amid glares from the platoons who have to stay behind.

At midnight they are relieved. They wend their way out of the trenches and behind the lines, their way lit by moonlight. They have new billets, Hux doesn’t know them; he consults the map he’s been given, by the weak light of the electric torch Mitaka holds. They are on the outskirts of a town, he knows that much, but the trenches now snake so far afield that Hux has lost track of which one it is; and it is only as he squints at the map that Hux realises where, exactly, they are.

“Amiens,” he says aloud, stunned.

 

* * *

 

_A—_ _., France  
21 September 1914_

_Dear Ben,_

_Surprise — after a quiet week in the newly-dug trenches, we are back in billets again, and so, hallelujah, I can finally sit down and write without fear of being shot at (or, more likely, called off to tell HQ how many pairs of wool socks each man has got, reply immediately.) I’m sitting now at a proper table, in a proper kitchen, and you’ll never guess where it is — we’re billeted near A., a town I know…in our own house. My mother’s house, Ben. I never thought I’d be back, after we cancelled our trip; but it hadn’t sold before the war broke out, and now here I am, in the queerest of circumstances. How Mother would weep to see muddy boot-prints on her lovely stone floors, to find half-dressed soldiers picking lice out of their hair in her garden…! I’m sleeping better here than I have anywhere in weeks._

_I wish you could see it, Ben — the fountain out front (dry now, too bad), and the charming white-washed kitchen, and the bedrooms with their big windows, the gauzy curtains floating in the breeze. The orchard out back has gone fallow; there are flies and bees buzzing round piles of rotting fruit on the ground, and a smell of wine pervades the air; we’re all a little drunk on it, I think, giddy with our few days’ rest and the astonishing country sunshine. Finally, an end to the rain!_

Hux looks up from his page and sighs deeply. He doesn’t know what else to say. He can’t quite put into words just how it feels to be back here. The map had told him they would be, but he hadn’t entirely believed it; it had, of course, been pitch-dark when they arrived, and his feet were sore and his head ached, and he decided he was probably delusional to see any resemblance to the countryside around their old house, well-drawn map be damned — until they’d crested a rise and there it was, perched in the valley near a stream.

On catching sight of that stream, Hux knew at once that he’d been right. He was assailed with a sudden, vivid memory: he was perhaps five or six years old, and he waded in the cool fresh water while his mother, dressed for the sun, sat on a towel spread out on the bank and tipped her head back, a peaceful smile on her face, her hair glowing softly in the light. He could feel the smooth stones of the riverbed beneath his feet, could see her turn her head when he called to her to join him; and she had, standing with a smile and picking her way down the bank, lifting her skirt up to her knees and swishing her feet in the water…

He picks up the pen.

_It’s so strange to be here without my mother. Everywhere I look I expect to see her, looking as she did before she was ill; I swear I can smell her perfume upstairs. By some trick of fate I’m bunking in my own bedroom. I haven’t told any of the men that this was once our place; all the new ones are a rougher sort and they already resent those of us with commissions. (To their credit they hide it well, but one can tell all the same.) Letting them know that these were my old summer digs won’t do me any favours with them._

_I wish you were here. I don’t often say that, because you’re lucky to be where you are, but I do wish you could see this house. Here I can almost forget that there’s a war on at all; I might be on holiday, soon coming home to you. But there’s some action taking place just a few miles from here, and we can hear the guns, like thunder. We’ll be going down again next week to replace the troops in the line — we’re all trying not to think about that, of course, but touch wood, they say the fighting’s not so bad where we’ll be._

_Time for baths now, I’m afraid — I must get the men in order. I’ll write again before we go back to the front._

_Ever yours._

Outside, he watches his men from a safe distance as they bathe in that same stream — stripped nude and unashamed, splashing about and dunking each other under the water. Hux doesn’t let his eyes linger; he is too careful. He thinks again of Ben, of Ben here, as it should have been: their plans for a trip in August had disintegrated with the outbreak of war. They had gained, of course, their furtive weeks together, but still Hux is nostalgic for what they might have had, _here,_ in this place he loves so dearly and had never thought to see again.

“Sir! Won’t you join us?” calls one of his men, Alcott, from the water. He stands grinning at Hux, his bare torso gleaming, one hand shielding his eyes from the light of the setting sun. Several of his comrades stop their mock-fighting and call to him too; they are gleeful, children again, delighting in these last golden days before they descend into hell.

_They know nothing._ A sudden heaviness falls on Hux’s heart. He shakes his head. “You know very well it’s not officers’ bath-time yet,” he calls back to them. “Hurry up, now, and let us have a turn.”

They protest, laughing good-heartedly. As he watches, the men troop out of the water and dry off, get back into their uniforms with grimaces of displeasure: even the spare ones are dirty by now. The sheen of the afternoon is already fading, and he is sorry to take it from them.

But that evening, after drills and lecture, his melancholy is lifted by the arrival of the post. There are two surprises waiting: a letter and a parcel, both from Ben. Hux’s face heats as soon as he sees his name in Ben’s handwriting, and he hurries back to his room with indecent haste, clutching his prizes to his chest.

Ben hasn’t written in some days, and Hux had been greedily, selfishly hoping that he would for his birthday, at least; yesterday he’d been rather disappointed, but what a relief to have this today. He’ll savour these boons tonight, away from the others, where no-one can ask questions. _Later, later._

And that night, in his room — his _own_ room, truly, where he has slept dozens of summer nights — Mitaka polishes Hux’s boots as Hux washes his face at the wash-stand, changes into his cotton pyjamas. He waits impatiently for the younger man to leave: many officers share quarters with their servants, but this house is large enough for at least some of them not to be obligated. Hux had jumped at the chance. He hates sharing a room with anyone, lovers (but for Ben) included — he had had to do it for years, at Charterhouse and then Sandhurst, and as much as he hated coming home to Huxley Hall, he was always glad to sleep in his own bed, without the nighttime noises of half a dozen boys to keep him awake.

And if he is alone, here, then he can open the parcel and read Ben’s letter and think of him, as he hasn’t been able to in weeks.

At last Mitaka is finished. “Goodnight, sir,” he says, standing and saluting, giving a funny little bow left over from his very recent footman days. “Sleep well.”

“Thank you, Dorian. You as well.” Hux closes the door behind him, waits until he hears his footsteps disappear down the hall; and then he crosses to the bureau, where he has left his parcel, and picks up the letter with his heart pounding in his chest. He tears open the envelope and sits down cross-legged on the bed like a boy on Christmas morning.

_Hux,_ Ben writes. He can hear him saying it. He admits to feeling pride in being called _Lieutenant Huxley_ , yes, and “sir” — but now what he would give to just be _Hux_ again, to hear Ben’s whisper, his moan of it. He reads on.

_Hux,_

_I’m sorry this letter is late. I’m so tired all the time, I don’t feel I can do anything; I miss you. I don’t want to do anything, go anywhere, see anyone who isn’t you. I wish I was there with you. They’ve started publishing lists of all the men who’ve been wounded or killed in the papers — I try to force myself not to read them, but I can’t. I have to, especially if I haven’t had a letter... I need to look. Just in case._

Hux looks up from the messy writing on the page. He had been wondering when it would come: the truth, how Ben is really feeling, behind the mundanities of home life that his letters have thus far contained. He had not had high hopes, and sees, now, that he was right to. He reads the rest of the letter with more caution, feeling disappointment tinged with guilt.

_When will you get leave? I know you’ve barely been gone a month, but I can’t stand to be without you. I think of you every night — I dream of you. I want you. I want more time, like we should have had. Even a few days more with you would give me strength again._

_I’m sorry. I’ve read this over and I’m ashamed. This isn’t what you want to hear: it’s your birthday, or I hope it will be, thereabouts, when you get this, and I should be more cheerful. The parcel is from Harrods — they do them ready-made now, to send to the soldiers. I know you like Gold Flakes but they only had Woodbines. I hope they’ll do._

_Happy birthday, Hux._

_Yours, always yours._

_Ben_

Below the signature, he has drawn a sketch: simple, fine lines, but Hux recognises himself, wearing a boater hat and linen shirt. That day in the meadow, in the sun, when he’d dreamt of Ben — if only they had known what was to come. Hux smiles at it, runs his finger over Ben’s name as if it were his lips. He will get leave, soon. Ben needs him to.

He turns to the parcel. He removes the outside wrapping and finds something labelled _Our Soldiers’ Half-Guinea Box._ Curious, he opens it, and inside discovers a bounty of small luxuries. Bars of soap, clean and fresh-scented; candles and new matches (his own are running low, the men all smoke like chimneys); a pack of Woodbines, as Ben mentioned; and cocoa, biscuits, Oxo cubes for soup. And enclosed with these store-bought goods are additional treats, clearly homemade: bread and a little pot of jam, and even half a birthday-cake. The note attached is in an unfamiliar, feminine hand.

_Many happy returns from all of us,_ it reads _._ It’s signed _Leia Organa-Solo._

Hux stares at it for a moment, taken aback. He still does not know what Ben’s mother thinks of him; this kindness is entirely unexpected. He grapples with his feelings, astonished to find himself so moved by her gesture. The bread smells heavenly after weeks of army rations.

All his goods are spread out around him on the bureau, the very same bureau where his mother once tutored him in French. He is at war, he is alone; but he is back in this house, and there are people who care for him, even if they are far away. Hux opens the pot of jam and dips his finger in. What a birthday this has been.

He’ll share the food with the men tomorrow, and write Ben a good long letter to make up for his silence. For now, he wraps all the food in its hamper again and climbs between the sheets, Ben’s letter safely stowed in the breast pocket of his tunic with the rest. He revels in the feeling of a down pillow beneath his head, a soft quilt overtop him; he closes his eyes, exhales, curls his toes in the (clean!) sheets. A stirring, between his legs; thinking of Ben.

Hux pulls down his pyjama trousers and takes himself in hand. When they are on the march or camped or in the trench, there is no chance to indulge like this; men always about, someone always awake, and the perpetual chance of being called from one’s bed at a moment’s notice. (And it is cold, and it is damp, and it feels wrong, to bring thoughts of one’s sweetheart into a place like the trench.) The extra risk, for Hux — should he lose himself, exhale Ben’s name, and someone overhear: a court-martial, or the firing-squad. Not even for Ben will he dare it — though that is not to say he has not come close before.

But he is alone, now. He strokes his cock and shivers at the drag of skin on skin. He has dropped his kit near the bed: he reaches out for the Vaseline and smooths the glide of his palm. Long pulls, up and down his shaft, feeling himself swelling full. Imagining Ben’s larger hand, his rough-worn artist’s fingers; the feel of a callous on sensitive skin. Hux’s mouth works in silent moans as he quickens his pace, hard and hot in his own hand.

_Ben._ Ben misses him, he needs him; and Hux needs him the same. Ben’s hands, Ben’s mouth, Ben’s body, the tight sweet warmth of him. Hux tightens his fist, slick, and arches up his hips; imagining Ben atop him, the look on his face as he straddles his cock. _Soon, perhaps._ The thought is drunk-making; only a few weeks, if they are lucky, and then — Ben’s brows furrowing in sweet concentration, and his mouth half-slack and wet; the soft moans that will escape him, _oh, Hux, there, please._ A sound breaks past Hux’s lips and he is alone, he does not care. _Ben. Soon._

His climax, when it comes, is a violent relief. He shudders, all over, for what feels like minutes; his release spills and spills over his hand. He lies there boneless for a time and then cleans himself, feeling better than he has in weeks. _And two more days in billets, at least._ He will be a new man by the time they go into the line again.

But in the morning, his request for leave is denied until late October at least, which really means November. Weeks and weeks still without him. For the moment, Hux thinks, biting his lip, at least he is bedding alone; at least he can pretend.

Directly after this failed request, he receives new orders: back into the line in two days.

 

* * *

 

How quickly those at home have learned to dread telegrams.

The first tragedy in the parish is the McMahons’ son, Alfred. His mother, with whom Leia has become fast friends since they’ve been here, was at home, knitting for the Red Cross with their one remaining maid, when came a knock at the door. A telegram boy stood on the step with his bicycle, and wordlessly held out the envelope, and — as Winnifred McMahon tells Leia over tea two days later (tears glimmering in her eyes but stoically refusing to fall) — before even reading it, she knew.

“And then she opened it, and there it was,” Leia relates sadly to her brother when she gets home late that evening, having spent all day with Winnifred, and left a fresh-baked steak-and-kidney pie, a batch of scones, and an enormous bouquet of lilies with the McMahons’ red-eyed housekeeper before she left. “Killed at the Marne, hardly a month after shipping out. He had only just turned twenty-one.” She shakes her head, sinking down onto the divan by the fire next to Luke and sighing. She kicks off her shoes and curls up like a girl, resting her weary head on her brother’s shoulder. “I can’t even imagine — if that was Ben…”

“Or Poe,” Luke supplies, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray on the teakwood side-table. “Or Finn, if he goes. Was Alfred betrothed?”

“Thank God, no,” Leia answers, rubbing her stockinged feet with one hand. “But the war’s only just started, and there’ll only be more war brides, and more and more war widows, as the fighting goes on,” she predicts. “Having our boys home by Christmas is seeming less and less likely by the day, I’m afraid.”

Luke murmurs his agreement. The two of them are silent for a moment, staring at the low flames flickering in the hearth, each lost in their own preoccupations and fears. “When is the funeral?” Luke asks, after a while.

“This Sunday,” Leia says, “at St Francis’. I’ll be attending.”

“I’ll go, too. Rey and Ben…”

“Don’t need to come.” Her decision is swift and firm, but Leia sighs again. “I know it’s foolish, but — they’re worried enough already, with Brendon Huxley already gone and the boys thinking of leaving; and I don’t feel like…reminding them what might happen. That in a few months, or a few weeks, or even tomorrow, we could get a telegram like Winnifred’s, and then the pews would be filled with mourners for someone _they_ love…” She trails off, having difficulty saying what she wants to say.

But Luke understands. He nods: “They’ve already had to grow up far too fast,” he says softly. “Let’s let them keep what youth they have left, even if it’s only for a little while longer.”

Leia nods against his shoulder. Luke picks up her hand and squeezes it, and she smiles up at him. “I’m glad you understand,” she says. “So, it’s decided, then; you and I will go, and we won’t mention it to Rey and Ben — or not yet, at least.” She yawns.

“Turn in, why don’t you?” Luke urges her. “You’ve had a long day.”

“No, no — not yet,” Leia says, shaking her head. “There was one more thing I thought of, while I was at the McMahons’. We have such a big house here, and only five of us in it, plus the staff downstairs. We’re hardly using half the rooms. So I thought, perhaps, we might convert the house into a soldiers’ convalescent home? The Stuart-Olivers are doing so with Clearwater, and Winnifred has a cousin in Hatfield who says that Lady Baillie has done the same with the Hall.”

“Well, if Miranda Stuart-Oliver is doing it,” Luke teases her, but he nods. “I think it’s a capital idea. I’ve always said this house is far too large; we may as well make use of it, especially with Ben leaving so soon, and maybe Finn, too — and I suspect we’ll be losing even Arthur to the army in no time. With whom do you need to make the arrangements, do you think?”

“The Red Cross, I’d imagine,” Leia answers, yawning widely again. “I’ll go into town tomorrow and speak to someone, find out what needs to be done… It’ll be good for Rey,” she adds. “I’m sure she’d be happy to help out; and if she’s busy enough she won’t have time to fret over Poe and Finn, if they do end up leaving.”

Luke nods again; he has thought of this too. “All the wounded soldiers will have to be careful not to fall in love with her,” he says fondly. “A wonderful nurse, she’ll make. Yes, Leia, I do think it’s an excellent plan. I’ll do anything I can to help out — although I’m not sure the young men will want a grizzled fellow like me bending over their bedsides, when they were expecting a fresh-faced VAD,” he jests, his eyes twinkling.

“If you’re grizzled, that means I am, too,” Leia says. “Careful.”

Luke laughs and raises his hands in surrender — “Well, you’re about a minute _less_ grizzled, I suppose” — and his sister leans over to kiss his cheek.

“All right, then. I’m very glad you support me in this, and in the other matter as well,” she tells him. “But Luke…”

“What is it?”

“Speaking of things we aren’t telling Rey.” The look Leia gives her brother is laden with meaning. “Are you ever going to let her know?”

Luke sighs. “I still don’t think it’s the right time.”

“When will it be?” his sister prods gently. “She’s a grown woman. She’s engaged. If you _are_ telling her — and you should; you know how I feel about it — you had best do it sooner than later, don’t you think?”

“It’s been nearly twenty years,” Luke begins, and Leia cuts him off:

“Why wait any longer?”

Luke sighs again. He rubs his forehead. “I know you’re right. I know I’ve been cowardly; I don’t even know what I’m afraid of…but it should be done. She should know.” He nods. “I’ll tell her before she’s married. I promise you.”

Leia smiles. “You won’t regret it.” She squeezes his hand. “All right, I’ve no more to pester you with. Goodnight, Luke; I’ll go into town early tomorrow to speak with the Red Cross, so don’t hold breakfast for me. I expect it, like anything involving war bureaucracy, won’t be a speedy errand.”

She rolls her eyes theatrically and rises from the sofa, stretching, hearing her joints crack. _Grizzled, indeed._ Since the war has started — or, perhaps, since Han’s death — she swears she feels her age like never before.

“Goodnight, Leia,” Luke returns. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out another cigarette, lighting it from the matchbook on the table. “Best of luck tomorrow.”

“Don’t stay up too late.” Leia touches him lightly on his greying blond head, crosses the foyer, and makes her way up the stairs, leaving her brother staring pensively into the remains of the fire. As she dresses for bed in her dressing-room — contorting her arms behind her back to reach the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons on her blouse and wishing she still had a lady’s maid, though it’s been months since she has — she thinks again of Alfred McMahon, shot down by strangers far from home.

_That poor boy,_ she thinks, climbing between the covers in her nightgown and blowing out the lamp. For he was just that: a boy, playing at being a man. She’d only met him once or twice, but she remembers him a tall, strapping, lively lad, with curly red hair and a crooked, dashing grin.

He was going to be a banker, like his father, Leia remembers Winnie saying. But his hands had been a farmer’s hands, big and strong and honest. He reminded her, Leia realises, in many ways of Han; and perhaps this is why she feels so strong a need to go to the funeral. For she has barely known Winnie five months, and the service will be small, and Catholic besides. But something about Alfred’s death has struck Leia to her core. Perhaps it is only that he is the first they have lost, and will certainly not be the last.

 

* * *

 

On the day of the funeral, Luke and Leia invent an errand in town and slip out to the church. In the meantime, since Leia went round to Winnifred’s, Mr Cartwright the village butcher received news of his own: his oldest, Jacob, has succumbed to blood poisoning at a field hospital somewhere in Belgium. His father had just posted a reply to his latest letter, dated three days before his death, in which Jacob cheerily assured him that he was out of immediate danger and looking forward to being home on medical leave.

The twins’ secrecy is no use, however: this morning, Rey finally lost the last of her hair-pins and took Ben’s bicycle into town to fetch more. In line at the shop she ran into Helen Tallmadge, Alfred’s sister-in-law.

“She was buying black crêpe,” Rey tells Ben later that day, sitting on his bed after coming in unannounced and startling him from his drawing. “I asked her what for, and she frowned at me and looked so terribly sad — her eyes were all red, and she nearly started crying right there in the shop. She told me that today was Alfred’s funeral, and that his mother had sent her to fetch crêpe for their hat-bands. Well, you can imagine my shock,” Rey says, her mouth turning down. “I had no idea. I knew him, you know — just a little, from spending summers out here with Papa when I was younger. That’ll be where he and Aunt Leia have gone. I wish they’d told us.”

Ben, sitting at his escritoire with his sketchbook closed firmly and his chair turned to face Rey, bites his lip. “I suppose they didn’t think — well, neither of us were close with him, why would we want to come… Or perhaps it just slipped their minds,” he suggests, but Rey is shaking her head. Ben doesn’t believe it either. He sighs: he does not know what else to say. It is a small betrayal but it rankles all the same.

“And now Jacob Cartwright, too,” Rey says quietly. She looks at her cousin, and Ben knows they are both wondering, _Who will be next?_

“Has he made up his mind?” Ben asks, not needing to state a name.

“No,” Rey says, a little forlorn hope in her voice. “No, he hasn’t decided firmly — but in the end I can’t see him not going. You know how he is. And if he goes, then I think Finn will, too. I’m almost certain of it.” She sighs. “Have you heard from Hux lately? D’you know if your parcel got there safely?”

An unspoken understanding has grown between them in the weeks since Hux left. Rey has never brought it up, but Ben knows that she knows how things are between him and Hux, and suspects that Poe and Finn do, too, seeing as — he is almost certain — they are similar between them.

 “No,” Ben says reluctantly, looking away from her. “Not since they arrived in Amiens.” He has been trying to ignore the nagging lack of letters, pretending it doesn’t worry him. (He has also wondered, selfishly, foolishly, if his own whinging and misery have driven Hux not to write — he would almost rather he be injured, than for that to be the case…)

He looks up again: Rey is watching him, a look of careful concern on her face. “That was more than a week ago. I’m sure… I’m sure he’s fine,” he says, faltering, and hating that he does. “Just busy.”

_Or dead,_ a cruel voice in his head reminds him. _On his back in a field somewhere, buried in mud and bloating with rot. Or laid-up in some filthy army hospital like Jacob Cartwright, bleeding out from his wounds, missing a limb, maybe, and dying of infection — and no-one would think to tell you, they don’t know who you are and don’t care. As far as anyone else is concerned you’re nothing to him, they wouldn’t even tell you if he died…_

“He’s all right, Ben,” Rey says softly, seeing the pained look in his eyes and reaching out to lay a hand on his arm, shaking him out of his thoughts. “I don’t know about you, but, well — I feel as if I’d _know_ if anything happened to Poe or Finn, if they do go,” she continues when Ben remains mute. “I’d sense it, somehow — know that something wasn’t right.” She gives a little shrug. “It’s far-fetched, perhaps, but I still can’t help but feel that it could be true…What about you?” she asks him. “Don’t you think you’d know? You’d feel it?”

“I suppose so,” Ben says quietly, after a moment. Rey’s theory sounds almost spiritualistic, smacks of table-turning and _the other side —_  but Ben is surprised to find that it gives him comfort all the same.

_Wouldn’t you?_ he asks himself. _Wouldn’t you know?_ He does not see how he would be able to go on living at all, if anything happened to Hux; so perhaps, then, his body would not let him. _Surely I wouldn’t be able to sit here, to draw, to read, to talk with her, if he was gone. Surely the sun wouldn’t come up in the morning and the moon come out at night. Surely my heart would not carry on its wretched beating._

“Yes,” he says, with more confidence now. “Yes, I — I think I would. I would know.” _I’d have to._

Rey smiles. She squeezes his arm. “There,” she says. “There you have it. He’s all right, I’m sure of it.”

Downstairs, the front doors open and shut again. Rey looks up: soon enough they hear Cecil’s hurrying footsteps, his reedy voice welcoming Luke and Leia home. “We’d best go down,” she says, glancing at the clock on Ben’s desk. “Tea-time.”

Rey greets her father as they all file into the parlour, Cora the cook bringing up a batch of tarts and the tea-things, Cecil reprimanding Arthur for some imagined fault. His remonstrations have increased, of late, and the whole house knows it’s out of affection and fear — for as they all thought he would, Arthur has enlisted. Soon he will be going off to training, and Cecil worries terribly for him, though he would never admit it to any of them (least of all Arthur himself).

As Leia is removing her coat and hanging up her bag she calls to Ben, “We stopped in at the post office, dear — a letter came for you.”

Ben drops the tart he’d reached for back onto the plate and leaps up from his seat. Leia produces a stack of mail and rifles through it, pulling out a slim, battered envelope and handing it to him, raising her eyebrows when he snatches it hungrily from her hand: “Expecting something?” she teases.

Ben is already tearing into the envelope, having seen the French post-mark and barely glanced at his own name and address on the front, in Hux’s neat straight public-school hand. The adhesive comes open easily, and soon the letter falls into his eager hands. Three pages folded neatly into thirds. He holds them for a moment, torn between racing up to his room to devour this longed-for blessing, or doing the polite thing and tucking it away, waiting until they’ve finished their tea…

He glances up at his mother, and his struggle must show on his face, for she clucks her tongue at him and says, “Off with you, then. We’ll save a tart or two.”

Rey looks over her father’s shoulder and smiles at her cousin, bolting up the stairs with the letter clutched in his hand. _I was right._

 

* * *

 

_22 September 1914_  
_Still A—_ _., France_

_Hello, Ben. Thank you ever so much for the hamper — the men would like to commend your mother, or her cook, for her baking, and I you for your drawing — do I really look like that? You flatter me most terribly._

_I’m so sorry to have been quiet for so long; I didn’t mean to worry you. There is a never-ending torrent of administrative work that seems to have fallen entirely on my unhappy shoulders (the perils of good penmanship, perhaps?) But there has been some action at Al—_ _. these last couple of days, and I found out this morning that we are to be moving back into the line, so I’m afraid another period of relative silence may follow this letter…_

Ben skims impatiently over the next paragraphs, and is disheartened to find that great chunks of the subsequent pages have been blacked out by the censors’ pens. Leave it to Hux to say too much, he thinks, to note down every movement of the army like a general writing his memoirs, thinking to preserve every last detail for the benefit of those at home — but forgetting that they’re not allowed to _know,_ or at least not yet. A half-smile tugs at his mouth as he flips to the final, mercifully unmarked page.

_Well, anyhow, that’s enough about our trials and tribulations out here; I’m sure I’ve bored you already. I don’t know when this letter will get to you, but if it’s before you go up to Oxford — good luck with the move, and do try to enjoy yourself while you’re there. Don’t spend so much time in your head. Treat me as your diary, if you need; tell me your sorrows and I’ll do what I can._

_I am thinking of you always. Don’t be distressed by my complaining, really — things are all right here. I’m all right. I’m still hoping this will all be over soon and I’ll be home to you in no time. In the meantime, I’m looking at getting leave sometime in November, perhaps even near your birthday. I miss our Latin lessons._

_Do write soon. I shall endeavour valiantly to do the same._

_Yours, as ever,_

_Hux._

Ben sets down the letter and feels first joy, and then dejection. He has written — he is alive, and uninjured; _he misses me, he does_  — but he is still gone, and not free to come home. _November._ Hux has written it with hope, as if it were a blessing; but Ben sees only the weeks and lonely weeks ahead. He sighs.

At least he will be at Oxford soon — and with it will come a whole new set of worries. But it will at least be something different, to fill the time between thoughts of and words from Hux…

_November,_ Ben thinks again, seeing a glint of gold beneath the dirt.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately — but altogether unsurprisingly — Rey’s worst fears are soon confirmed.

Two days after Alfred McMahon’s funeral, Poe Dameron makes an unscheduled visit to Millennium House, early in the dry, hot afternoon. He’s met at the door by his fiancée, who kisses him quickly with wariness in her eyes:

“What is it?” Rey enquires, and Poe strokes her hair and tells her only, “I’d like to speak to the family.”

Reluctantly Rey leads him into the parlour, where Luke, Leia, and Finn are playing a game of cards. Ben is in town this afternoon, and Rey’s book lies abandoned on the sofa: she’d jumped up and left it when she heard the bell. Now she returns, and announces, “Papa, Poe’s come to speak with us.” There is a faint quaver in her voice.

Luke looks up, smiling, but his face soon grows serious when he sees the grim looks on each of their faces. Leia takes in the situation and tactfully rises; Finn makes to follow her, but both Poe and Rey implore them: “Stay.”

All four take their seats, Poe in the armchair across from Luke’s, and Rey in her spot on the sofa with Finn at her side. The scene, Rey registers dimly, is a sombre parody of that joyful day just over a month ago, when Poe had come to ask Luke for his only daughter’s hand and had been accepted at once.

Now, though, Poe’s face is serious, his rich brown eyes sober. Rey has been expecting this, dreading it beyond anything; and yet it still comes as a shock when Poe turns to her and says calmly, gravely, “Rey, my love, I am going to war.”

_“No,”_ is her immediate, forceful response. “No. You can’t. Papa —” She turns to Luke, as if his authority will have any bearing on the decision of another man’s son, but she finds his expression to be one of calm resignation.

“Poe and I have already spoken,” Luke says gently. “I’ve given him my blessing.”

_“What?”_ Rey turns blazing eyes on Poe. “You told my father before you came to me? How _could you,_ Poe?”

“Rey.” Luke holds up a hand, his eyes still fixed on Poe. “Let him speak, my dear.”

“You know I should go, sweetheart,” Poe tells Rey earnestly. “Everyone else is. They need every man out there.”

“Is this because of what Ben said the other night?” his fiancée fires back. She is sorry to betray her cousin like this, but she adds, “He’s only _jealous._ He was cruel, and you shouldn’t have listened to him, not if it means you’re going to go!”

“I’m going to go, too,” Finn blurts out, before Rey can get another word in.

Luke’s, Leia’s, Rey’s and Poe’s heads all turn to him at once. Rey’s eyes widen, and again she bursts out, _“No!”_

Finn swallows hard. He has been dreading this, telling her. After his time in the Order, he mistrusts armies in all their forms, and he cannot stand the thought of leaving Rey. But in the end, he knows he would rather be in danger, and ever reminded of his former life — but by Poe’s side — than safe at home with Rey while their lover put his life in peril, alone. And so he will go with him.

A pair of Judases they made, in formulating their plan. Poe came to see Luke some days ago, to tell him his decision before Rey, whom Finn had taken out on a walk. Luke, Poe told him after, had nodded solemnly, told him that he would be doing the same if not for his hand and his age; and that he knew Poe would make a fine soldier, that the army couldn’t be luckier than to have him.

Later, when they were alone, Poe had taken Finn’s hand and told him softly, _I would never ask you to risk your life, but they’d be lucky to have you, too…_ And thus he had detailed his plot, his eyes alight with confidence. Here in the drawing-room is its most difficult stage: convincing Rey.

“Rey,” Luke warns her again, but she dismisses him furiously, exclaiming, “I can’t let you go, too! I can’t risk losing you _both!”_

“Finn, it’s your decision,” Luke tells him, while Rey fumes. “You’re of an age to make this choice for yourself.” He sighs. “I can’t say this isn’t what I most feared when war was declared; but it’s up to you, my son.”

Finn swallows. He looks to Poe, who gives him an encouraging nod; and Finn looks into the face he loves, and thinks again of fighting at Poe’s side instead of staying home and waiting for news of him — news, maybe, of the very worst kind; and he knows his choice is made.

“I’m going.” _I have to._

Rey gives a strangled groan. _“Finn,”_ she pleads.

Finn clasps her hand. “Please, Rey,” he says softly.

After a long, long moment some understanding passes between them; and with the greatest pain, Rey gives a short nod. She looks between Finn and Poe, and they understand that they have her reluctant blessing.

“Thank you, Rey,” Finn says.

“Everyone says we’ll be home by Christmas,” Poe adds. “Only a short time away, I promise, and then we’ll be married like we planned. The post is so quick between here and France; you’ll hardly know we’re gone at all.”

Rey sighs, murmurs something in displeasure — and then looks up. “But Poe,” she says suddenly. “Are you going to fly?”

Poe glances at Finn. “If Finn is joining up, it’ll be as a soldier. So I’ll go with him.”

“No flying?”

“No.”

“Then let’s get married,” Rey says in a rush. “Soon. Right now. Today! If you’ll not be with the RFC, then you don’t have to stay a bachelor — Poe, _please,_ if you’re going to go —”

“Rey.” It’s Leia who speaks up, sounding sorry. “We’ve already made payments; the invitations have been sent out. It’s too late to change the date now, my dear.”

“I don’t care!” Rey protests, her eyes flashing. “I don’t need a big wedding! Something small, in the village — we’ll go to the town hall, it’ll be easy —”

“Rey.” Poe, now. “Darling, I have family coming from South America for the date we’ve set in February. We’ve arranged for a priest, and your dress is being made. It simply wouldn’t be practical.”

Rey seems to deflate. “Fine,” she says in a small voice. _“Fine._ But don’t — oh, _Poe.”_ She breaks off, crossing her arms across her chest as if to hold herself together, and says nothing more.

After an uneasy moment, Poe stands, and holds out a hand to Finn, who rises. “Shall we go into town and put our names down, then?” Forced cheer.

Finn nods. “Let’s go.”

Wordlessly, Leia follows them out: she will give Luke a private moment with his daughter and hope that he does what he should. 

Rey, sitting bolt upright with her hands clasped tight in her lap and her right foot jiggling without pause, waits til she hears their voices fade and the front door close behind them before she rounds on her father.

“Let me go too,” Rey demands, her eyes flashing. “I’ll die out here, knowing that I’m safe at home while Finn and Poe risk their lives,” she says fiercely. “Let me train to be a nurse, or drive an ambulance. They could send me to France, I could be useful —  _please,_ Papa, I need to do _something!”_

“No, Aurelia,” Luke says, sorrow heavy in his voice and his eyes. “I can’t let you. It’s too dangerous; you’re too young.”

“I spent my whole life on the streets before you took me in, and I survived, didn’t I?” Rey asks angrily. “I think I can take care of myself!”

“I know you do,” Luke replies. “That’s why I can’t let you go.”

“Papa, you _must!”_ Rey insists, her voice rising, colour blooming in her sun-freckled cheeks as she stares her father down. “I’d be all right, I’d be working, it’s safe enough for the nurses —”

“No, Rey,” Luke cuts her off. “No.” He breaks off, and sighs heavily, turning away from his daughter. When he looks back at her, Rey is shocked to see his blue eyes filling with tears. “Rey…”

“Papa?” Rey asks, feeling suddenly ashamed: she’s never seen her father cry before.

“Rey.” Luke takes a deep breath, and his voice is quiet but strong when he speaks. “I lost you once before. I can’t risk it happening again.”

Rey’s forehead creases. She says nothing, utterly puzzled, and then finds her voice: “Lost me before? What do you mean?”

Luke sighs. “I suppose there was never going to be a good time to tell you this, was there?” He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, which are wet and filled with pain. He takes another shuddering sigh, and then finally says, all in a rush as if pulling off a scab, “You are not an orphan, Rey.”

“Papa?”

“Your mother…she was very ill. She died when you were just a year old, and your father never recovered.” Luke swallows hard, his eyes closing and pain flashing across his kind face. “He lost his way after she died. He had no will to live. All their money had gone toward your mother’s treatment; he had you, darling girl, and nothing else in the world. He knew he couldn’t provide for you, so he —” and here Luke pauses, and somehow, Rey knows exactly what he’s going to say before he says it: “So _I_ sent you away.”

He closes his eyes again, his mouth giving a tremor. Rey goes to him at once and puts her arms around him, tears welling from her own eyes, and listens mutely as Luke tells her, “I’m sorry, my love, I am so sorry.” He takes a breath. “I left you in the care of an orphanage in London and prayed you would be safe there. Unfortunately..."

"I ran away," Rey finishes his sentence guiltily. "I didn't like it there. I thought I would do better on my own." She shrugs, unable to keep a little pride from her tone: "And I did."

"Indeed you did," Luke agrees, fondness in his eyes. "Against all odds — a little girl, all alone on the streets! It’s because of you that I founded the Academy, you know; I had this horrible guilty need to _do_ _something_  for all the poor children out there, to atone for what I’d done, coupled with this vain blind hope that maybe one day my own child would find her way back to me.” He gives a short laugh. “Madness, I know, in a city like London; but somehow, by some miracle, she did.” He smiles at Rey. _“You_ did. And once I had you back, I vowed never to let you go again.” He laughs again, with more humour this time: “So you see why I’m reluctant to let you go to France.”

“Oh, _Papa._ You really did — you really mean —?” Rey’s eyes are wide. “I have a family after all?”

“Of course you do. And you have a home. You were born here, you know,” Luke tells her, looking around the room fondly. “Millennium House, in the spring of ninety-five. Your mother loved this house.”

“No wonder it always felt so familiar,” Rey whispers. She looks around, too, in amazement, trying to imagine her mother, whose face she has never known, sitting in this very room: this very chair, perhaps. “After all these years...!”

Luke smiles at his daughter. Rey turns to him after a moment and gives a little laugh, wiping the last of the tears from her eyes: “And people say we look so alike! All except for the eyes.”

“Those are your mother’s,” Luke tells her proudly. “Just like your mother’s. Martha Jane.”

“Martha Jane. My mother,” Rey repeats as if in a dream. She clasps up Luke’s hands at once: “You must tell me everything about her, Papa, _please.”_

“There’ll be plenty of time for that if you don’t go to France,” Luke reminds her.

Rey sighs. “I don’t want to feel useless, Papa, you know I couldn’t stand that.” She pauses and reflects for a moment, coming reluctantly to a conclusion. “I suppose I can be of some help to the Red Cross in town, sewing bandages and such…I’m a _terrible_ seamstress, though, really I am.”

“Or you could train as a nurse with them,” Luke suggests. They have not yet heard definitively whether the house will be fit to use as a convalescent home, so he doesn’t mention it for fear of getting her hopes up for naught. “No time spent overseas, but no sewing required.”

“Yes, I suppose.” Rey wrinkles her nose. “I’d much rather be building aeroplanes — or _flying_ them,” she says, a smile breaking unconsciously across her face; and then she stops herself, sighing. Her next words are grudging. “I suppose I’ll do what I can at home.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Luke tells her sincerely, pressing her hands with relief. He hates to limit her like this, and never has before – but they are at war now; everything has changed. “You’ll hear from Poe and Finn all the time. They know you want to be there with them, but they also very much want you to be safe — as do I. We all love you _terribly,”_ he says, smiling; and there, the sparkle has returned to his eyes. After a moment, Rey smiles back.

“Now.” Luke claps his hands. “Your mother. She was quite the outdoorswoman, you know, and no seamstress at _all_ ; that’ll be where you get it from…”

 

* * *

 

The grammar school has been taken over as a recruitment office: a red-lettered banner stretched over the front entrance proclaims proudly that the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the Northamptonshire Regiment recruit here. Even now, weeks after the initial stampede to enlist, the queue stretches out the door and partway down the block; the men waiting tug at their collars and groan in the heat, but their eyes are alight with the excitement of war, the destiny they feel is only steps away.

Poe, as a trained pilot, is not joining the ranks, like most; he sidesteps the snaking queue and joins the other, shorter one, directed by polite signs in the school lobby, for those men already in His Majesty’s service. He nods to several men in uniform, who nod back respectfully, although he is in mufti today.

Finn, nervous, hovers at Poe’s side, ducking his eyes from the soldiers’ bold stares, uncomforted by his reassurances that the plan he’s devised will work out. “Relax,” Poe tells him gently, feeling him fidget. “It’s going to be fine.” But Finn is not convinced.

“Captain Poe Dameron?”

Poe steps forward confidently when beckoned, to the door being held for him by a retired HAC man with medals on his chest. But Finn stays planted where he is, torn, feeling the other men’s glares on him as soon as Poe is not by his side — and then Poe looks back at him, frowns lightly, and gestures —  _Come on!_

The vet at the door raises his eyebrows, but makes no comment. Surprised, at Poe’s urging Finn follows him into the classroom where the evaluations are being held. The vet shuts the door behind them and they find themselves in front of a row of officers in uniform, seated at low desks pushed together: some smoking, one cleaning his spectacles on his shirt. There is one chair placed in front of them; Poe does not sit.

The man cleaning his glasses puts them back on and then looks up at them. He breaks into a smile: “That’s never Poe Dameron, pride and joy of Eastchurch’s class of ’10?”

“Hello, Mr Pava,” Poe greets him, grinning. Andrew Pava is a friend of Luke Skywalker’s, a pilot like him, and an occasional guest instructor at the Naval Flying School, Eastchurch. His daughter Jessica is the same age as Rey; they became fast friends during Rey and Luke’s summers here.

“Enlisting today, are we? Good man, good man,” Pava says jovially — and then he notices Finn, hovering a few paces behind Poe. “And who’s this?” he asks. His tone is suddenly chillier.

Poe notices. Finn sees his hands clench briefly at his sides, and feels a fresh pang of love for him, for being offended on his behalf — and then he says, lying effortlessly, “This, sir, is my valet Finn. He’ll be joining up with me.”

One of the other officers gives a violent cough. Finn dares to glance up and sees that all of them are frowning, Mr Pava included. “Will he, now?” one of the old men speaks up, his voice rumbling and raspy, a cigarette smouldering in his right hand. His eyes are small and suspicious, his coarse moustache greying.

“You are already a certified pilot with the Royal Flying Corps,” another of the officers says to Poe, looking up from his file, spread out on the table in front of him. “This man is not military; he would need to go through basic training. There are no battalions reserved for his sort, you know,” he adds pointedly.

Finn feels his face grow hot. Poe clenches his jaw. “Yes, sir,” Poe says firmly, fighting to keep his voice level. “But I don’t want to join as a pilot. I’ll enlist in the infantry, and Finn will come with me. An officer is permitted to choose his servant, is he not?”

“Now, son,” Andrew Pava begins, “you’re an excellent pilot; surely you want to fly —”

But Poe stands his ground, looking him square in the eye. “Mr Pava,” he says, speaking over him, “Finn is indispensable to me. I am willing to be grounded, to go through basic again, if it means we go to war together. He has been a loyal servant to me for many years, and it’s time I repaid him.”

These are all lies, of course, but Finn feels an overwhelming swell of emotion: Poe is fighting for him the way he and his friends used to fight for each other, before the Order changed everything. Glancing at the ground to hide it from the officers’ disapproving stares, he allows himself a small, pleased smile.

Mr Pava heaves a sigh. His comrades mutter amongst themselves; the coughing man waves smoke from in front of his face and then, irritably, stubs out his cigar. “Poe,” Pava begins again, adopting a patronising tone, “you must understand —”

“I didn’t come here to argue,” Poe cuts him off again, still perfectly calm. Pava’s face betrays vexation, flushing red behind his moustache. “Finn and I came here to enlist. We want to serve our king and country, and we want to do so together. I will not leave this office until we are both members of His Majesty’s army, and in the same battalion.”

“It’s simply not done,” Pava protests, flushing redder still.

At this, Poe simply reaches into his jacket and pulls out his pocketbook. He takes nothing out, but glances up at the board, eyebrows raised. Finally, Pava relents.

“We cannot accept a _bribe,”_ he mutters, flustered. He reaches blindly for the paperwork. “Fine, fine. You’ll go together, if it’s that important to you — but _he_ belongs in the ranks. You, Poe, are of the officer class.”

Finn can tell that Poe is seething, but wisely, he holds his tongue. He gives a tight nod. “Whatever you say, sir.”

“And don’t say we didn’t warn you,” adds one of the gruff old men. “It won’t be easy, boy,” he says, nodding to Finn. “They won’t want _your_ sort in with the reg’lar folks down on the front.”

Poe stiffens, but Finn steps forward instead.

“I know, sir,” he says, surprising himself with the steadiness of his voice. “But I’m prepared to fight and die for my country, same as them; so I suppose that after a time they’ll stop caring what colour my hands are, and just be glad that they can hold a gun, and perhaps shoot down a German before he gets to them. I suppose,” he says, growing bolder, “that the German won’t care, either, what colour the man is who kills him. He’ll only know that he’s dead.” He steps back.

To his surprise, the gruff man gives a guffawing laugh. “Well, I’d say you’re damned right about that,” he concedes. He gestures impatiently to Pava, whose hands hover over the enlistment forms. “There’s a queue outside, Andrew. Hurry up with those and send these soldiers on their way.”

They fill out the forms and hand them in. Poe is unable to keep a triumphant grin from his face. Pava gives them a last wary looking-over — so different from the avuncular beam with which he’d greeted Poe — and says, “You’ll still have to pass a medical, both of you.”

“We’re healthy as horses,” Poe says cheerily, and claps Finn on the back. “Thank you, sirs, for your time and trouble. We’ll see to it that we kill a Hun for each of you, by way of thanks.” He turns on his heel and makes for the door.

Finn follows quickly behind, a grin spreading across his face. _We did it._ _I’ll be with him._

They leave the recruiting station and make for the pub down the road. There’s a crowd of newly-minted soldiers there — men their age from the village, already one or two pints in — and they make room for Poe as soon as he strides through the door, welcoming him with claps on the back and cries of his name. When Poe gestures to Finn, they widen their circle to let him in, and thump him on the shoulder too. _They don’t care,_ Finn thinks with shock and relief, feeling a weight lift from his chest. _Maybe it’ll be all right. Maybe we’ll be brothers-in-arms, for true._

“Here’s to killing Huns, my lads!” calls one drunk dark-haired man, lifting his pint into the air, and the others cheer and holler, lifting their glasses too.

“And home by Christmas to our girls!” whoops another. The others laugh, and Poe wraps an arm around Finn’s shoulders and lifts his glass to him. He gives him a sly, secret wink.

“And home by Christmas to our girls.”

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to blaze so quickly through the first month of the war: writing the actual war stuff was, ironically, the worst part of this whole project, so I've (mostly) spared you and myself from _too_ much tedious detail. Thus, things are progressing a little more speedily than they did IRL; for example, the trench system wasn't set up quite so soon, nor was the rum ration introduced until later on. Ah, well.
> 
> I'm on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com).


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for fairly graphic violence at the end of the chapter. Thank you to [Minzimpression](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minzimpression) for proofreading my German!

* * *

 

Poe and Finn depart for training in only two days’ time. A farewell party is quickly arranged; seeing as Millennium House is that much closer to town than the Damerons’ estate, after the party Poe will stay the night there, and in the morning, cab to the station with Finn — and Rey, who has insisted on seeing them off. From there, with the rest of the regiment, they will take the train to London, and then to Aldershot to begin basic training.

The evenings have grown chill enough to prevent them having the fête outdoors, as they did Finn’s birthday dinner barely two months ago. The atmosphere is considerably heavier; there is so much less laughter now. All the same they make it through five courses in the candlelit dining-room. Finn and Poe each squeeze Rey’s hand now and then. Poe’s parents, Kenneth and Sara, watch their son with solemn eyes: memorising him, before he leaves them.

After coffee in the drawing-room it is close to midnight, and Poe’s parents must go. The Skywalkers remain back to allow them a moment of privacy, but from where she sits, Rey can see them in the foyer. She sees Lady Sara held tight in her son’s embrace, Poe rubbing her back as she whispers words of love in Spanish. He kisses her tear-stained cheeks and promises her he’ll be all right.

“Besides,” Poe tells her, “we have embarkation leave. We’ll be back home in nine weeks to say our proper good-byes. Nine weeks, Mamá, just nine.”

“And then who knows how long.”

“Mamá, please. Don’t think like that.”

She hugs Poe tightly again, and Lord Kenneth steps in and embraces the two of them. He closes his eyes and rests his chin on his son’s curly head, his face pained. Rey turns away.

Finn is watching them, too. His and Rey’s eyes meet for a moment, and, wordlessly, she reaches out to squeeze his hand. They keep them linked until Poe has made his farewells and his parents have been escorted out to their carriage. When he returns to the drawing-room, he sits heavily down and reaches for his abandoned whiskey, drinking deep.

The conversation quiets. “It’s late; I’m off to bed,” Leia announces, in the silence. “Thank you all for a lovely evening. Boys, if I don’t see you in the morning…” She stands from her chair and kisses first Finn, then Poe on the cheek. “Good luck. Make us proud.”

“We certainly will, ma’am.” Poe smiles tiredly.

“Goodnight, all. Sleep well.” Leia makes to leave.

Rey, suddenly, stands too, dropping Finn’s hand. “I’m tired as well,” she says, her voice slightly strained, as if close to tears. Her father frowns, worried, at her: she notices. “I’m all right. Just — tired. Very tired. Goodnight.” She follows her aunt out of the room without another word, walking unnaturally quickly, and then hurries up the stairs ahead of her. The sound of a door slamming can shortly be heard.

Another silence descends. Ben reaches for his own glass, only to find it empty, and swirls the melted ice at the bottom. Luke sighs and clears his throat: “I do believe the party’s over.”

Poe rises, stretching. “I’m for bed as well, if you’ll excuse me.” He turns to Finn. “Might you be able to show me where I’ll be sleeping?”

“Of course.” Finn stands. He sees worry in Poe’s eyes, and understands. He nods to Ben and Luke: “Goodnight. We’ll be leaving early, so don’t feel like you must get up and say goodbye —”

“Of course we will,” Luke interjects. He stands, and embraces Finn tightly, patting his back. “Sleep well, my dear boy. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Goodnight,” Ben adds. “Good luck.”

“Thank you, Ben.” With that, Poe and Finn leave the drawing-room and head for the stairs, breaking into a jog. They bypass the room where Poe will be put up, and head directly to Rey’s room, single-minded.

Finn knocks on the door. “Rey?” he calls softly. They wait. There is no response. He knocks again, and when a slight noise is heard from inside, opens the door.

“Darling,” Poe murmurs, stepping into her room after Finn and closing the door behind him, leaving the room lit only by the lamp on Rey’s bedside table.

Its glow reveals Rey, hunched-up in bed with her huge dressing-gown — once Finn’s — thrown around her shoulders. Her forehead is pressed to her knees, her arms wrapped tight around herself. Poe makes a sound of distress when he sees her, and asks again, soft and urgent, “My darling, what’s wrong?”

Rey looks up, at this, and her eyes are red-rimmed and accusing. She swipes at the wetness on her cheeks. “I don’t want you to go,” she says curtly. “I can’t bear for you to leave. Not both of you at once.”

“Oh, Rey.”

In an instant Poe is at her side, and Finn the other, sitting down on the bed and making its frame creak. Finn — one of so few people who have seen her cry before — knows what to do: he opens his arms to her, and she collapses into his embrace, muffling an angry sob in his dinner-jacket. Poe, instinctively, puts his arms around them both, leaning his head on Rey’s shoulder.

“Rey,” Finn whispers into her hair. “Rey. We’re still here. We still have time.”

“We still have tonight,” Poe says. “And we won’t be gone forever. We’ll always come back to you.”

“How do you know that?” Rey demands, her eyes, which had fluttered closed, opening sharply again. “Already, men are dying! Jacob, and Alfred, and who knows how many hundreds more — and it’s only been _two months!_ It’s worse than they said it was going to be. I can tell that already. The reports that are coming in — from Mons, and the Marne last month —”

“We’ll be safe,” Poe interjects, taking up her hands and caressing them with his thumbs, over and over again. “We’ll be in training for weeks, and we may not see action for months. We could be behind the lines for so long that the whole thing sorts itself out before we ever see combat.” He smiles, and kisses the spot behind her ear that she likes, where her neck meets her jaw — “What do you think of that, sweetheart? We might never even fight” — but she twists from his touch, unrelenting.

“You won’t be _safe!_ Not truly, not _really_ safe, not as long as you’re out there, or preparing to be,” she argues, turning to Finn now as if hoping to persuade him instead. “And it _won’t_ be over that quickly. Wars never go that fast.”

“You never know,” Finn says gently, although her fears are his own. Now that he’s made his mind up, he is excited to prove himself as a soldier and to fight for England at Poe’s side — but he has been reading the papers, and he cannot ignore the creeping sense that it will all be so much worse than they expect. For now, though, he swallows his worries for her sake, and says instead, “Won’t you keep your hopes up? Won’t you think of what good might come of this, instead of how badly it might end?”

Rey makes no answer. Instead, she lifts her face and kisses him, anguished and furious.

Finn is surprised, at first — the dim light, the taste of salt on her lips —but he kisses her back. He can feel her quivering with pent-up energy. He closes his eyes; he cups her face in his hand; she exhales, her tensed body relaxing minutely. Poe holds them both tighter, nestling his face into Rey’s neck and kissing the hollow of her shoulder, rubbing his hand slowly over her back.

Finn and Rey kiss, and kiss again. His tongue slips into the warmth of her mouth. She is still crying, silently; he knows how much she hates to. He kisses the tears from her cheeks. Poe is whispering sweet words against her skin. _“Te amo, te amo, te amo,”_ he murmurs, and now Rey turns her head and kisses his mouth.

Finn watches them. They are beautiful together, as he had imagined them to be, but even more so, for they are _here,_ and he can do this — he can reach out, and twine his fingers through Rey’s hair, scratch her scalp gently and hear the moan this produces, gasped against Poe’s mouth. Finn feels the blood flowing to his groin. He watches them.

They break the kiss. “Finn,” Rey murmurs, low, and looks over her shoulder. She is not crying any longer. “Come here.”

He kisses her again, feels her tongue tracing the inside of his bottom lip, sending warmth tingling through him. And then Poe’s fingers are on his chin, bringing Finn’s face to his, their lips together. Rey exhales as they kiss. “My boys,” she whispers, her anger gone. “My loves.”

“Touch me,” Finn requests, in the softest of murmurs between kisses. He does not know whom he asks; he wants them both. And both comply. Poe’s hand wraps around the nape of his neck, his thumb calloused and gentle as it sweeps over the sensitive skin there, and Rey’s fingers go at once to the buttons of Finn’s jacket. He pushes it off, and then she is undoing his shirt, spreading her hands over the warm planes of his chest. Her fingers graze his nipples. Finn sighs.

Poe breaks off their kiss at last, and begins to remove his own formal jacket, and then his shirt and vest too. As he undresses, Rey’s hands find his hair, his face, and stroke all down the skin that he exposes. Her back is to Finn: the buttons of her nightgown. He lifts his hands. “May I?”

“Yes,” Rey says, and leans forward to kiss Poe as Finn unbuttons her gown. It falls away to expose her shoulders, freckled lightly by the sun; he bends forward to kiss them and she sighs. The gown crumples down to rest around her waist. Finn’s hands find her small, warm breasts, and he caresses her nipples until they stiffen and she moans. Poe opens his mouth as if to taste it.

Rey wriggles out of her nightgown, letting it fall off the bed and to the ground: she is naked now, and lovely. Inside his trousers Finn’s cock is hard, and he can see a bulge in Poe’s lap too. “Beautiful,” Poe breathes, seeing Rey, and he reaches to undo his buttons; Finn follows suit, and now they are all three bare. “Beautiful,” Poe says to him, his gaze drinking him in, and Finn shivers, shivers.

They lie down, the three of them in Rey’s big bed, their legs entangling and moving against one another. Rey is in the middle, and she kisses one of them and then the other — the soft wet sounds of their mouths — as Poe and Finn caress her skin, and each other’s, whatever warmth they can find. Hands move and mouths move. Between her legs Rey is wet; Poe is hard, Finn is hard, and yet they feel no hurry. This night will last forever, for it may be their last.

They take turns being worshipped.

First Rey — Poe’s head between her legs, and then Finn’s, until she is sodden and gasping, her body spasming beautifully as she comes for the first time that night. Then Finn, both their hands on him, bringing him so hard and so dizzy that he thinks he will die, right here, in their arms; but before his peak Poe lets him go, and kisses him: “Wait.”

Poe next. They two fall upon him, Rey to his mouth, Finn to his cock. They suck and mouth at him so sweetly, and he finds one hand’s purchase in both of their hair, caressing them. He, too, moans and arches, but stops them before his climax. They pull back, and Poe sits up, and he asks them, “What now?”

Finn is first to answer, surprising them all. “You,” he tells Poe. “I want you inside me.”

Rey hums, at this, and presses herself closer to him, to both of them. “And I want you,” she tells Finn. “Like that.”

Arousal shudders through Finn at her words. “You mean it?” he asks her, looking her in the eyes.

Rey laughs, softly, kindly, and kisses him with a passion. “Yes,” she murmurs. “Yes, yes, yes.”

She lies back, and looks up at the two of them. Her thighs fall open. “Come here,” she requests of Finn.

He complies, kneeling before her, unable to stop himself from running one hand over the soft inside of her thigh, from knee to hip. She parts her lips and sighs under his touch, smiling.

“Wait — stay there.” Poe disappears, quickly, for a moment; going to his discarded clothes, and returning with Vaseline and two sixpennies.

He hands one sheath to Finn and then settles himself behind him. Poe takes himself in hand, strokes his cock to full hardness; curly hair where his thighs meet, and a drop of clear liquid at the tip of his cock. He rolls on the sheath, dips fingers in the Vaseline, and spreads Finn, carefully, with one finger and then two. Finn breathes and relaxes and opens for him.

Rey is watching them, rapt. One hand strays between her legs, and she strokes herself with languor as Poe enters Finn. He gasps, shutting his eyes, and Rey sits up and kisses him, slow. When he opens his eyes again as Poe settles himself inside him, she lies back. “Are you ready?” Finn asks her, his voice slightly strained, with effort and desire. Rey nods.

Finn takes himself, sheathed, in hand and guides himself inside her, to where she is open for him. Poe pushes forward slightly as Finn slides deeper into Rey. “Oh,” she says softly, and _“oh”_ again when he is fully inside her. She exhales, her neck arching prettily. “Kiss me,” she requests, draping her arms around Finn’s neck, almost drunk with pleasure. He complies.

As they kiss, Poe begins to move. Slowly, slowly, but how the movement passes through them; they are an electric circuit, live wires. They gasp in unison, and Rey’s eyes flutter closed; she pulls Finn still closer to her, and doing so, Poe closer inside Finn. Poe’s breathing is strained with the effort of supporting himself without hurting Finn, and with how close he is to climax; but he holds off, and Finn holds off, until Rey has come first, clenching deliciously around him; and then he is lost.

Finn shouts, wordless, as he comes inside of Rey; and in another instant Poe spills himself inside of him. They clutch at one another, going weak-kneed with pleasure; Finn trembles, trying not to collapse on Rey. Poe folds himself overtop Finn and presses soft, helpless kisses to the base of his spine as his body shakes against him. “My loves, my loves, my loves,” Rey is murmuring.

Finally it ends. They disengage from one another, going soft and slack again, exhausted and alive. Rey fetches a cloth from her vanity-table and they clean each other gently, warm skin so sensitive still. When they have finished they return to bed and fall into one another, as if they’d never left.

The nights are growing colder. In Rey’s bed, they are warm. They fall asleep, three like one: Rey’s head on Poe’s chest, Finn’s head on her breast. Hands entwined, legs a tangle. They murmur goodnights, kisses like magic charms; _tonight we are safe, tonight we are loved._

And still, and still — the morning comes.

The men do not return to their own beds. They are up so early that it hardly matters; and when they rise Rey rises with them, kisses them each. They all three dress in silence, Rey in stays and a Sunday dress, Poe and Finn in khaki.

“So handsome,” Rey says sadly, fingering the cuff of Finn’s uniform. “Oh, look at you. My fine soldiers.”

What a photograph-print they would make, the three of them in the looking-glass. They pause a moment, solemn: Finn knows that this is what he will remember: the summer, their youth. Violets pinned to Rey’s collar, their scent colouring the air.

Luke and Leia see them off, in house-coats; Ben has not come down. Elsie presses sandwiches and thermoses of tea into their hands, and wipes tears from her face as she kisses Finn goodbye. He squeezes her hand and tells her with a look how grateful he is. Rey refuses the mug of tea that her father offers her. Her face is so unlike her, pale.

And now the cab is at the gate. Luke and Leia help carry their luggage out, although Poe insists they not bother: Leia small but stronger than she looks, Luke managing admirably with the leather hand. The car is packed so quickly and there is nothing left to do.

Luke steps forward and pulls Finn tight to him. “Nine weeks,” he tells his ward, hugging him fiercely. “I’ll see you in nine weeks.”

“Nine weeks,” Finn agrees. They break apart. Luke is smiling at him, his face might be the sun. There are tears glimmering in his blue eyes. He reaches out his good hand and cups Finn’s chin in his palm:

“I’m so proud of you,” he says softly. Behind them, Poe is promising Leia they’ll keep each other safe. “So proud, Finn. You’ll never know. My son.”

Finn feels his throat welling tight. “Father,” he says: the first time in all his life that the word has had meaning. Luke pulls him close again, and his tears dampen Finn’s shoulder.

“Finn.” A hand on his arm: Poe. “The cab is waiting.”

Finn steps back from Luke. “I’ll write,” he promises. “As soon as I can.” He embraces Leia, quickly, feels her soft, dry kiss on his cheek; and then he joins Poe and Rey in the cab. He and Poe wave out the windows, Rey sitting quiet, fragile, between them, looking like she’s hardly there at all.

At the station: what a riot. The crowd cheering, howling wildly for the soldiers as they congregate on the platform to wait for the train. Poe waves, dips mock-bows with a humble grin on his face, tipping his cap to the ladies. Finn keeps his arm laced tight with Rey’s and tries to ignore the goggle-eyed stares.

And now, the train pulling in, belching steam. The rush to board, the khaki-clad soldiers scrambling aboard, laughing and joking —  _one step closer to France! One step closer to the filthy rotten Hun!_

Rey, Finn, and Poe hang back as long as they can. When finally they can delay no longer — the conductor’s whistle, warning the stragglers on the platform — then Rey kisses them each, hard, on the lips, completely unmindful of the rest of the people around them. They all three hug, one last time, and Rey says fiercely, “You’ll come back to me. The both of you, you’ll come home safe.”

“We will,” Finn promises her. “Of course we will.”

“And we’ll write. Constantly. You’ll be sick of us within a week,” Poe adds. “You’ll see!” He chucks her chin with great affection, and, as desired, she manages a smile.

“Go,” she says. “They’re close to leaving. Go join them.”

“I love you,” Finn tells her, and kisses her cheek.

“I love you,” Poe says, and catches up her ringed hand. He winks: “Don’t forget about me.”

“I love you,” Rey responds to them both, looking between them. “I won’t. I could never.”

 

* * *

 

Aldershot. Every morning begins at five-thirty sharp with the wail of a bugle call. Finn, Poe, and the thirty-eight other men who came up on the train with them roll from their hard, lumpy barracks beds (Poe was quick to secure neighbouring cots for himself and Finn). They spend the next hour gulping down pathetic tea and getting their quarters spick-and-span, and then at six-thirty they proceed outdoors for their morning jog. _Uphill both ways_ is hardly an exaggeration, out here.

Eight hundred hours, breakfast, and then grumbling to the parade square — grumbling, at least, until Sergeant Draven arrives.

Draven is in charge of their training: a middle-aged man with a high forehead and coarse, thinning blond hair, his face set in a perpetual look of displeasure. He speaks curtly and clearly, and never tells the men anything twice; on their first morning, one poor sod asked him to repeat a question, and the icy look he received in return ensured that all of them now know better.

Drills begin with stretching and more jogging, and then marching, forming fours, performing about-turns: many of the men, nervous, tripping over their own feet, struggle to keep up with the beat Draven sets — “Hup, two, three, four” — but Poe’s strides are perfect, his arms and knees snapping with precision, his chin held high and proud. All the other men watch him for a guide, and soon enough fall into a rhythm.

But Draven calls them to a halt and beckons Poe aside, leaving them to begin again without him. Faces fall. The men start to march again, to Draven’s quiet beat (he will not shout, he tells them; they must learn the rhythm for themselves, until they can hear it like a second heartbeat). Once they have regained the pace themselves then Draven lets Poe back in. The men relax to have him lead them, and grow lazy again — Draven calls crisp rebukes to Fitzgerald, Allen, Marlowe, _knees up, arms sharp_. Finn, though, focuses only on his own movements, and is pleased to find he’s gotten the hang of it.

After morning drills, at 1215 hours, is lunch — first, back to the barracks to change; Poe, grinning, pats Finn’s shoulder and tells him he’s doing well, just as he knew he would, as all around them the men groan and complain loudly, collapsing onto their beds. Hot food in the dining-hall, at least, for there is frost at night, now, and a nip in the air all through the morning. The men laugh and joke and relax, the tension etched on their faces since the moment of waking slowly being erased — and then being drawn on again, when after the sweet reprieve of one-and-three-quarter hours, the end of lunch is signalled and they return, quiet, subdued, to the square for still more drills.

(In their second week, weapons were introduced. They learn musketry and drill with arms. Finn hates the feel of a rifle in his hand, thinks it gross, unwieldy, sinister. He dreads the thought of having to kill with one. When they learn to use their bayonets, the other men plunge them with barbaric glee and whooping shouts into their straw victims; but Finn hesitates, unwilling, until Draven shouts his name. The canvas tears beneath his blade and he half-expects to see blood pouring from the “wound,” to hear a garbled dying scream; and then he must do it again, and again, and again. It grows no easier with time.)

Finally at 1615 their time is their own again — for a little while, at least. Even shining boots and cleaning rifles feels like leisure when no-one is shouting at you to do it, as one of the men reflected one day. Today, once Poe and Finn have finished their remaining duties, at Poe’s suggestion they round up a group of men and go into Aldershot town, to the Soldiers’ Home for an hour or two of relaxation before supper and lectures. “First round is on me,” Poe promises, and that gets the weary men out of their armchairs —  _round_ meaning, of course, of billiards, for they are still on duty yet.

At bedtime, in the barracks’ dark, Poe will reach out from his bed and squeeze Finn’s hand. _Another day. We made it._ In their separate cots they have naturally turned themselves to be facing one another; the first and last things they see every day are each other’s faces. _Good morning,_ Poe will mouth to Finn, as the other men groan awake. And at night, when there is no-one to see them: _I love you._

Nine weeks like this. Nine weeks, nine weeks, nine weeks and then home; home, and then to war.

 

* * *

 

At home: bustle and fuss. The Red Cross has approved the use of Millennium House as a soldiers’ convalescent home, and in the first days of October, madness descends on the house — led by the tall, forbidding figure of Matron Caroline Pfeiffer, a professional nurse sent up from her hospital in London.

“Lady Organa-Solo,” she greets Leia on the day the work begins, giving her hand a firm shake. Around them, in the foyer, people are streaming in: their own remaining servants and those from neighbours’ houses, and even some walking-wounded men — the home’s future occupants — who have been enlisted to help transform the family home into a place of rest and care. “My name is Matron Pfeiffer. I’ll be in charge of operations here.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Leia says. She finds the younger woman’s handshake admirable, and trusts the look of her straightaway: white-blond hair beneath the nurse’s cap, pulled sharply off her face; clear blue eyes, strong cheekbones, a no-nonsense demeanour. “Won’t you come in?”

They proceed into the parlour, the first room to be evacuated of its furniture to make space for the beds. Leia gives the matron a tour of the house, introducing her to Rey, Luke, and Ben when they encounter them. Rey takes to Matron Pfeiffer at once, pumping her hand with enthusiasm:

“You’re a proper nurse, then! I’m taking my course with the Red Cross in town,” she says proudly. Once these lessons started, she came round quite quickly to being stuck at home — more so when she also learned that, even if she were allowed to become a VAD, at only nineteen she would have to wait four years before they would even consider sending her overseas. _The war will never_ _last that long,_ she’d sighed, sincerely dejected, and that was the end of it. “I do think I’m rather good at it.”

A smile graces Caroline Pfeiffer’s handsome face for the first time since she’s been here. “We’ll have need of all hands on deck once the men arrive,” she tells Rey, uncondescending. “Have you friends who are training as well? Do bring them along.”

“Yes, ma’am!” And Rey races off at once, to fetch her hat and go into town, to call on Jessica and all the other girls in their class.

“The library, my brother and I have agreed, will be kept for our use,” Leia tells the matron as they descend the stairs again, having left Ben in his bedroom, hiding out like a cat from the commotion downstairs. “I do hope there will be space enough without it; we did want to keep _some_ room for ourselves,” she explains, sounding rather abashed. “The men will be welcome to use it as well, of course, but we’d prefer not to move beds in for fear of damaging the books. Luke has quite a collection.”

“There’s more than enough space,” Caroline asserts, nodding. “My sincerest thanks, again, Lady Leia, for the use of your fine home.”

“Anything we can do to help.”

The rest of the day passes in a blur of assembling beds and putting sheets on them (Rey’s hospital corners put everyone but the matron herself to shame); stocking every room with sufficient bandages, ointments, buckets, and rags to prepare for any eventuality; and cleaning what seems like every surface in the house, to reduce the risk of any common illness being picked up by the healing but still weakened men. When finally the family sit down to supper, Matron Pfeiffer seated at Rey’s side, it is with exhaustion and the sense of a job well done.

“The first troops will arrive tomorrow morning,” Caroline informs them. A rare smile: “I do think we’ll be ready.”

They raise their glasses and toast. The war is coming home.

 

* * *

 

On October third, Ben gets a telegram. He opens it slowly, with dread — but as he reads it, a disbelieving grin blooms over his face.

 “What’s that look for?” asks Rey, teasing, as she passes him with her arms full of fresh gauze for bandages. “Has someone proposed?”

Ben shakes his head, looking up from the page with dreamy relief in his eyes. “It’s from Hux. He’s gotten a pass. He’ll be in town on Monday.”

“Oh, Ben, how lovely.” Rey beams at him. “And just in time, too!”

“Quite.” Ben goes up to Oxford on Friday the ninth, less than one week from now.

“I’m so happy for you.” She pecks him on the cheek and then hurries off to her duties, humming what sounds like ‘Gilbert the Filbert’ to herself.

Ben stands in the foyer reading the telegram over and over again, unable to stop smiling. Hux’s three-day pass amounts to only one day at home, what with travel time from France and Dover; but Ben accepts this willingly. He has been missing Hux terribly, pining for him; they had thought to be apart for weeks yet, until November — the last Ben heard, Hux had seemed confident in being home for Ben’s birthday, the twenty-first of that month. But now he will be here in just two days. _Only forty-eight more hours without him._

Those hours, mercifully, pass quickly. Ben is enlisted to help escort the newest wave of arrivals to their beds; more and more soldiers are arriving each day, and the beds are rapidly filling. The house is never silent, but nobody minds; Arthur has gone, now, off to training, and with Finn and Poe away too, the interim had grown too quiet. It’s good to be busy once again: too busy for Rey and Ben to think or to worry, just as Luke and Leia had hoped.

Almost too busy, that is. Ben’s nightmares of his father’s death are interspersed perennially now with images of Hux, sightless eyes fixed on the cold French sky above him, blood matting and staining his lovely red hair. The night before his arrival, Ben doesn’t sleep a wink, his skin cold with the thought of derailed trains, crashed cabs, cancelled leave. But morning comes, the dawn gentle, and Ben bathes and dresses with impatient haste. _Soon, soon, soon._

Hux is stopping off at his own home first, but he plans to be at Millennium House this afternoon: Ben has never known a longer morning. He wolfs down his luncheon with one ear cocked to the foyer, and then retreats mulishly to the library when Leia reminds him that the walking soldiers need to eat in the dining-room, too. When, at last, there is a rap at the front door, he flings himself from his library chair (three books tossed haphazard around him, none able to hold his attention for long), and sprints to the foyer.

He wrenches the door practically from its hinges and _oh,_ there he is.

“Hux.” Mouth dry, heart pounding.

“Ben.” Cap in hand, half-smile.

A dizzy moment, suspended, and then Ben throws himself into his arms. “Oh, Hux, Hux, Hux,” he murmurs, into his neck, into the khaki shoulder that doesn’t smell of him. Hux’s arms wrap tightly around him and then let him go. They break apart, cautious.

Over Ben’s shoulder, Hux has caught sight of the beds in the parlour, the nurses hurrying to and fro throughout the house. “What’s all this?”

“Never mind,” Ben says, quickly. “I thought — I thought we might go for a walk.” His hands still rest on Hux’s shoulders, tentatively, as if he were made of glass. “To have some privacy.”

“Yes.” Hux’s curiosity can wait. He puts on his cap again and they are off.

Nearly as soon as they have rounded the corner, out of sight of the house — both of them glancing back over their shoulders — Ben stops, and pulls Hux to him, and kisses him full on the mouth. Their lips meet breathlessly.

But Ben pulls back after one kiss. His eyes are hesitant, his face hovering on the edge of fear —  _has he forgotten, does he still want me —_ and then that almost-fright dissolves into sweet relief, when Hux takes his face in both hands and kisses him again, fiercely. _He hasn’t. He does._

They kiss and kiss, Ben’s back against the rough stone wall, Hux’s fingers in his hair; and then Ben pulls back and says, his voice near-giddy and low, “The woods?”

They trek there with haste. Ben notices how Hux is on alert, his head whipping to every small sound; he walks quickly but carefully, scanning the ground every so often, not even seeming to realise that he does it. Suddenly there is the crack of a gunshot through the still autumn air, distant but distinct, and he freezes, his hand going at once to the empty holster on his hip.

“Someone’s hunting,” Ben reassures him, laying a concerned hand on his arm. “They’ve been at it all morning, out on the moors, and every once in a while the sound reaches us with the wind. That’s all.”

Hux is tense beneath him — he has a hunted look, himself — but slowly he relaxes. His hand lifts from the holster, and he shakes his head, looking embarrassed. “Habit,” he says, and gives a brief laugh. Ben frowns. Hux notices. “Come on,” he says, too lightly. “We’re almost there.”

The trees loom before them. They tramp through the brush and branches and the dead leaves on the ground, deeper and deeper into the small wood; into its heart, the place Hux, alone, had most hated and craved as a child. But he is no child and he is not alone now; now the thick darkness of the place spells safety. He takes off his tunic, lays it down, sits atop it, and pulls Ben down to him: “Come here.”

Ben climbs practically into his lap. Hux is _real,_ slim but still solid and _alive_ beneath him. He had been starting to wonder, to forget; the reality of their summer had begun to be subsumed by his nightmares. It had all been too good to be true. Too good for Ben, for the wreck of his soul. But it was true, it was all true, and here is Hux: living proof.

“You’re here,” Ben whispers, running his hands over the bared skin of Hux’s shoulders, his arms. He is thinner now than when he left, but stronger, too: cords of muscle beneath the soft fragile skin. He catches up Hux’s hand and strokes it, feels callouses with his thumbs, imagines the rifle that put them there. He brings the hand to his own face. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Hux repeats, low. He kisses Ben, pulls back to look at him, kisses him again. His hand moves from Ben’s cheek to his hair; he takes a fistful, grips. Ben exhales into his mouth. Hux bends his face to mouth at Ben’s neck, insistent, the heat of his breath in his ear making Ben shiver. “My God, Ben. Two months.”

Ben is panting already, fisting his hands in the back of Hux’s vest, feeling the insistent ache between his legs. “Don’t say that,” he bids him, canting his hips into Hux’s. “Not now. Not now.” He kisses him as if to erase the words. “Touch me. Just touch me. I want — I need —”

“I know,” Hux murmurs, his hands moving to Ben’s buttons. “I know.” He frees him, strokes him, and Ben cries out; the forest swallows the sound. Hux fits their mouths together as his hand moves on Ben’s cock.

“Will you fuck me?” Ben asks.

Hux is about to nod assent, but then remembers. His hand stills: he sees with sudden clarity the little tub of Vaseline, tucked away with his spare uniform, his rifle, and his books, in France. “I don’t have anything,” he says, and from the way Ben’s face falls Hux knows he understands his meaning.

“Will it hurt without?”

“Very much.”

Ben swallows. The look in his eyes is almost pathetic as he says, “Do it anyway.”

Three months ago Hux would have refused: would not have been capable of doing anything to hurt Ben, no matter his will or consent. He remembers how Ben had begun to cry when they made love that night before he left, and how Hux’s own body had seized up, gone taut at the sound, abhorring even the possibility of having caused him pain.

But that was then. Now:

“Lie back.”

They switch places. Hux undoes his own trousers, his drawers, as Ben waits on his back with his trousers kicked to the side, his cock standing high between his thighs. Hux gazes down on him. That sweetness in his eyes, even here, beneath the hunger. The khaki under his head, his legs — incongruous, wrong.

“Here.” Hux holds out his hand.

Ben takes Hux’s fingers in his mouth, and his eyes flutter as they close. He sucks at them with such care, his brow knitting, his lovely mouth pleating and smoothing out again. With his thumb Hux strokes the plush bottom lip and Ben shivers, bodily, his eyes blinking wide again, the heavy lashes seeming to slow their opening. Hux withdraws his fingers and kisses the mouth where they had been, both to apologise for and to avow his complicity in what he is about to do.

He spreads Ben slowly, but soon he asks him to go faster. Hux knows it must be hurting already, but Ben hardly squirms, does not make a sound except to beg, his voice thin, “Please, please.”

After some moments: “Do you think you’re ready?” Hux asks Ben, who does not, cannot know. Irresponsible of him: cruel, even: but perhaps it has not been so long after all, or perhaps Ben is only that desperate, because he nods, a small, strained movement, and says, “Yes.”

Hux shouldn’t let this go on any longer. He will hurt him; a new line will be crossed, one that was unimaginable to them this summer; a better man would halt before it. Hux strokes himself to full hardness with a spit-slicked palm. Entering Ben is a bitter homecoming.

He cries out — how could he not? Hux’s instinct brings his hand to Ben’s mouth, quieting him at once. His eyes, above Hux’s hand, are wide and frightened, almost betrayed. Hux has seen similar looks on the faces of children in the bombed and pillaged villages of France. “I told you,” he says tonelessly, and Ben closes his eyes.

Hux lifts his hand from his mouth. “Keep going,” Ben says, eyes tight shut, and Hux does.

The dead leaves beneath the khaki crunch loudly as they move. Even now, mid-afternoon, a chill in the air. Autumn has come. Hux thrusts into Ben, hears the whimpering sounds he tries and fails to conceal. He thinks of summer. His orgasm builds suddenly; he buries his face in Ben’s neck when he comes and he swears he can taste July there.

He has finished quickly, too long deprived of even his own touch; Ben is still panting, whether in pain or anticipated pleasure. “Please, please,” he begs again. Hux hears a wounded man pleading for a bullet’s mercy, and he pulls out of him too roughly. Ben gives a broken moan.

Hux bends to take him in his mouth. Ben gasps, sharply, his whole body arching to meet Hux, his nails digging into his back. Hux licks and sucks at him, tastes him, welcomes the feeling of a cock in his mouth, and swallows Ben’s spend when he convulses and cries Hux’s name.

Ben lies there, his chest rising and falling quickly still, and Hux moves to lie beside him, staring up at the iron-grey clouds. He feels — he doesn’t know how he feels. He has wanted this for weeks, has dreamt of Ben every night since he left him; from the time he received notice of his leave he has been impatient, crawling out of his skin with wanting him. And now — this.

Strange, how he’d expected it to be different. He is not who he was when last they were together.

Ben turns to him, now, a fragile hesitancy on his face. He looks the way he did the first time they made love, in the stables that day: breathlessly uncertain, disbelieving, and — undeniably — afraid. He looks like he is going to say he is sorry.

“Was that all right?” he asks, just as he had then. He is timid.

Something writhes within Hux’s chest: revulsion, guilt, sick triumph. He looks at him. He nods. “I missed you,” he says, and his voice has a strange emptiness.

“I missed you, too.” Ben looks like he could cry. He lays a hand on Hux’s chest and leaves it there, as if to reassure himself that his heart still beats beneath the thin army-issue vest. “I’m so glad you’re back. Even just for a little while. I — I hated to think of you so far away.”

“I’m here now,” Hux says, and Ben nods. He goes silent again.

They are still almost fully dressed, but the air grows cold. Ben winces when Hux puts on his uniform tunic again, brushing the leaves and grass from the back; Hux doesn’t see. They walk back to the house amid the trees whose leaves are changing colour as they die. In the foyer, as Ben shuts the door behind them — returning them firmly to the real world — Hux glances around, taking in what he had only briefly glimpsed before.

The rooms visible from here are full of beds, and those beds full of men: soldiers. There is a constant clatter and murmur in the air. A young woman, unknown to him, hurries past them in the foyer, her arms full of blankets. “What did you say this was, then?” he asks Ben, who is bending to untie his boots.

“The house is being used by the Red Cross,” Ben explains, straightening up. “For a convalescent home. I thought I’d mentioned — but then they only moved in a few days ago; I didn’t have time to write, and anyway it’d’ve crossed with your telegram. It doesn’t matter,” he interrupts himself. “Ah — have you eaten? Tea’ll be served soon, I expect — or if you aren’t hungry, we can wait until supper —”

“Tea will have to do,” Hux answers. “I’m afraid I have to catch my train back to London before supper; I thought I’d just eat at the station. It’s a long way to Tipperary, and all that.”

“What?” Ben looks confused. “You’re going back to France. Aren’t you?” He looks hopelessly hopeful at the thought of Tipperary, of Ireland, so much closer to here.

“I – oh. It’s a song. A soldiers’ song.” Hux shakes his head. “Never mind. Let’s go to tea, then.”

Instead of the drawing-room, Ben leads him to the library. They find Leia already there, pouring tea into a number of cups while Elsie places the filled ones on a trolley. “Hello, Mama,” Ben greets her, kissing her cheek. “Hux is here.”

Leia looks up from her work. “Hux,” she says, sounding distracted and surprised. “Of course. How lovely to see you again, safe and sound.”

“Thank you, Lady Leia. It’s good to be home.” Hux sits down in a wing-backed chair and accepts the teacup Leia passes him. Ben sits across from him and sips too quickly at his own cup, obviously still nervous to have his mother and Hux in the same room.

But soon enough Leia and Elsie have filled the trolley; Leia turns to the gentlemen and says, “We must be off; the soldiers need their tea-time, too.” She follows the maid, pushing the trolley, from the library, her heels clicking briskly on the floor.

“Your mother has taken to life during wartime,” Hux notes, setting his cup in his saucer and reaching for a shortbread biscuit from the plate on the low table. “Was it her idea for the Red Cross to use the house?”

“Yes,” Ben answers, “and my uncle’s, too. They wanted to help in any way they could, and they wanted to —”

“To keep me busy,” chimes in a merry voice. “Hello, Mr Huxley!”

Hux looks up: here is Rey, in a blue nurse’s uniform and smart white cap, the Red Cross emblazoned proudly on her sleeve. She dimples at Hux and hurries to take up the teapot that Leia has left behind for them, pouring herself a cup and then sinking into a chair and taking a grateful sip. “Ah,” she says with satisfaction. “It’s been a busy day, and it’s hardly half-over.”

“Good afternoon, Rey,” Hux greets her. “Nursing, are you?”

“Yes,” Rey says happily. “I wanted to go to France, but they still aren’t sending volunteers — and besides, I’m too young.” Her little frown is charming. “But I’m doing what I can at home in the meantime.”

“Very admirable of you,” Hux tells her, sincerely. “I have had a few men wounded already — nothing too serious — but when they came back from hospital, they had nothing but the highest praise for the nurses who made their time there more comfortable.”

Rey beams at him. “Good! I do so wish I was at a field hospital. D’you think they’d take me as an ambulance driver? — No, I suppose that is rather a stretch. But how is it out there, Mr Huxley? Ben tells me nothing of your letters.” She shoots her cousin a mock-disapproving glance.

 _And here we go._ “It’s not so bad,” Hux says, preparing himself to pretend nonchalance. “The mud and shrapnel that always manage to find their way into your breakfast are rather unpleasant, of course” — here a slight smile at Ben’s frown and Rey’s “Urgh!” of disgust — “but all in all, it’s not terrible. Tedious, mostly. Endless days in the trenches, doing nothing, waiting for a show.” Looks of confusion: he switches to civilian terms. “Some action. A battle. Anything to break up the days.”

“I thought it was quiet where you were.” Ben looks concerned.

Hux shakes his head. “That was a while ago. Back when we were still in Amiens. That’s why it took me so long to write — once we moved to Albert, we saw combat almost at once. We fought for days. Things had only ended a couple days before I found out I had leave, and the last I heard, we were moving down the line to Arras for another push.” He falls silent, thinking of being thrown into combat as soon as he gets back.

“Have you killed anyone?”

It’s Rey who speaks up, surprising everyone. She doesn’t look at all embarrassed to have asked such a bold question.

Slowly, Hux shakes his head. “You can never really be certain,” he lies. “What with all the mess of a battle — bullets and shells flying everywhere, men screaming, falling for all kinds of reasons. It’s harder to tell than you might think.”

He knows he killed at least five men, if not more, at Albert. He knows, because he followed the path of his bullets and then saw the light snuffed-out from their eyes. He knows because he felt a thrill to see this, a thrill like nothing else.

Rey nods, apparently accepting his false words, although her eyes are circumspect. “I see.” Ben, though, looks relieved; and Hux knows he was right to lie.

They drink their tea, nibble at biscuits, talk of nothing much at all for a few minutes; and then Rey drains her cup, sets it down, and springs up from her chair, smoothing her apron over her skirt. “Well, I must get back to work,” she apologises. “Matron Pfeiffer will have my head if I’m even thirty seconds late.” She grins at them both and then hurries from the room, calling, “Toodle-oo!” over her shoulder.

Hux and Ben are alone again. Hux had expected Ben to relax, finally, had thought the tension in his shoulders would release once Rey had gone, but he looks no different. His gaze, anxious, follows his cousin out the door, and only when she has disappeared does he turn back to Hux.

“I’m glad she’s busy,” Ben says, with unexpected passion. “She’d worry too much, otherwise.” _Like I do._

“Yes.” Hux looks down at the empty cup in his lap but makes no move to pour another. “That’s good.”

Silence, again. Ben is antsy, perplexed; they have not been so reserved with one another for months. He wants to break the tension but does not know what to say, where to begin. There is a strange hard pride in Hux’s voice when he speaks of the war, but at the same time he seems reluctant to speak of it at all. He’s about to say something — he doesn’t know what; anything to lift this shroud — when Hux does, instead.

“You go up to Oxford soon,” he states. His back is so straight: a soldier’s posture. “Do you feel ready?”

Ben winces. He doesn’t want to go; he doesn’t think he ever has, not really. Oxford had brought him closer to Hux — their tutoring sessions, after all, had been the instrument of their connection — but now it will take him even farther away from him. “I suppose,” he answers. “I’m not…excited, though. I’d rather not go.”

They both know where he would rather be. Ben looks up, and Hux sees this in his eyes. He nods, the slightest dip of his chin. “I know. But you should.” _If they won’t let you fight, you may as well make use of yourself._ “And you’ll do well. I know you will.”

“Maybe.” Ben looks away. When his eyes meet Hux’s again, there is almost an accusation in them. “Oxford is a long way from France. It would hardly be practical on a three-day pass.”

“Neither was this, really,” Hux points out: Oxford, in fact, is closer. “But — I had to see you.” _Why, then, does it feel so fruitless now?_

“Still.” Ben looks frustrated. “Will you ever get to come home for longer? One man in town got a two-week pass. Surely we won’t always have to make do with only days.”

“That man was probably wounded,” Hux says, and his tone is too sharp, he knows it. “They don’t give long leaves freely, even to officers. I’ll do everything I can to get away for longer, but I can make no promises. You know that, Ben.”

“I know.” Ben bites his lip, cowed. And then he stands from his chair, and comes to kneel before Hux, looking up at him as if in supplication. He takes Hux’s face in his hands and kisses him, searching.

“I wish you never had to go back,” Ben murmurs when they break apart. He braces his hands on Hux’s thighs, his face timid. “Can’t you stay any longer?”

He hates himself for asking, especially after what Hux has just said. But something is not right between them, and he feels that, given time, all will be well again, as it was before. _A day. Another day. A few hours, even. Let us come to know each other again._

But Hux shakes his head. He lifts a hand to brush back a lock of hair that has fallen in Ben’s eyes; but the gesture is less affectionate than automatic, as if Ben were a soldier whose uniform needed adjusting. “I can’t,” he says firmly. “There’s no way. I’m going back on the late train from London tonight.”

“I know. I know. I’m sorry.” Ben sighs, looks down, swallows hard.

Hux’s chest is tight with pity, regret. _I have no choice. We have no choice._ He puts fingers to Ben’s chin and lifts his face to his own. _We have right now, and that’s all._

All too soon Hux must go. They walk into town together, dine at the train station; the gentlemen they pass on the street salute Hux, smiling, and cast odd looks at Ben. Over supper Hux drinks three glasses of wine and Ben says nothing. The train comes at seven o’clock.

On the platform, the young ladies clasped in their soldier-lovers’ arms weep openly, kiss their faces again and again. The uniformed lads on the train hang out the window waving handkerchiefs. Ben and Hux stand apart from the crowd and from one another, something heavy hanging in the air.

“I’m so glad you came,” Ben says, finally, because the conductor has blown his whistle and they are running out of time. “Even for so short a time. We were lucky.” He smiles, weakly.

“I’m glad, too. It was good to be away from it all.” Hux returns the smile, or tries to. His head hurts. He wonders if his men are well, in France. “I’ll come again as soon as I can,” he promises, and they both know how empty are those words.

Ben nods. The whistle blows again; Hux glances over his shoulder at the train. At the last second before he goes, Ben grabs his arm, and pulls him close in a longing embrace.

“Goodbye, Hux,” he says. “I’ll send you my new address as soon as I’m settled. Write. Please.”

“I will,” Hux replies. He will do better. He will let Ben know he needs him, too. “I promise. Goodbye, Ben.”

Their time has run out. Hux breaks from Ben’s arms and jogs to the train, goes aboard. He disappears, and then reappears at a window: that red hair, a beacon. He waves to Ben, and is silent amid the cheering and weeping of the crowd.

Ben waves back. The wheels screech; the steam billows; the train pulls away.

 _Gone._ It feels still more final, now, than it did two months ago. Now they both know where he is going, what he is returning to. For all his blasé talk of lassitude, Ben knows there is much Hux has not told him, and likely never will. He has a whole life of which Ben has no part, and can’t. In that life he is in danger and there is nothing Ben can do to keep him safe.

He walks home. His mother and cousin greet him with sympathetic eyes and then return to their work and purpose: to their war. Ben, upstairs, is alone in his.

 

* * *

 

Several days pass, as unremarkable as any since Hux left in August and took the colour in Ben’s life with him. Finally, on the ninth, he goes up to Oxford.

He refuses his mother’s offer to train up with him — she is busy enough at home — and spends the long ride with a book instead, trying to read but distracted by the constant glances and whispers pointed his way. A young man, healthy-looking, dressed in civilian clothes; but the scar —  _where on earth did he get it?_ He is a puzzle, and, apparently, one that provides endless entertainment to the middle-class ladies and their grubby children in his carriage. He shuts his eyes and feigns sleep in the hope of some peace and quiet, but it doesn’t come. When at long last they arrive in Oxford, he shoves past the women to fetch his trunks, ignoring their offended exclamations.

His lodgings are on Catte Street, and private, for which he is grateful. His scout greets him warmly, shaking his hand, stepping in to disburden him of his bags, refusing both Ben’s help and his protests with a firm and kind word. Ben is told he’s free to go explore, that his man will take care of unpacking, and although this makes him uneasy —  _but why? There’s nothing in your things that you need to hide —_ his letters from Hux are in the breast pocket of his coat, kept close to him always — he extricates writing-things from his travelling bag and goes to find somewhere to sit.

The college is a riot of activity, even with the war on. Those undergraduates, almost entirely first-years, who have come up at all look rather ashamed to be here; by their youthful faces Ben suspects they are by and large biding their time until the birthdays which will free them to enlist. All the same they are busy moving in, aided by scouts and servants and harried-looking parents, and the halls ring with shouts and laughter. Ben ducks his head and hurries across the quad to the library.

_9 October 1914_

_Dear Hux,_

_It’s hard to believe you only left Monday night: it seems we’ve been apart for months again already. I arrived in Oxford this morning (“came up,” is that what you call it?), and am…settling in, I suppose. I have a scout — I don’t know what to do with him; I expect I’ll be able to take care of myself and my room just fine, but tradition is tradition, I suppose — but I have escaped him and the whole mess of moving in and am writing this in the library. (One of the libraries, I mean. Not sure which.) I hope you got back to France safely, and I hope you’ll stay safe now you’re out there again. There are hardly any students older than freshmen here: I wonder how much the population will dwindle as things go on._

Even the words on his page sound false; he feels he hardly knows himself, these days. He sucks on his pen and tries to think of anything more he can say.

“Benjamin Organa-Solo?”

Ben looks up, startled. A stranger is addressing him, holding out with a smile a piece of embossed cardstock. Ben clears his throat. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Welcome to Hertford College. The Principal is holding the first Formal Hall of term this evening.” The young man, whose voice bears the faint trace of some foreign accent, hands Ben the invitation. Upon it, in an ornate script, he reads, _FORMAL HALL, HERTFORD COLLEGE. FRIDAY, 9 OCTOBER. 7 P.M. SUBFUSC MANDATORY._

“Thank you,” Ben says, weakly, and sets the paper down, unsure what to do with it. The young man, an eager-looking sort with a shiny mop of blond hair, doesn’t seem to take this as a dismissal, continuing to hover, smiling, at Ben’s side. “Ah — that will be all.”

“Of course. My name is Peter Hahn, if you need anything more.”

“Thank you, Peter.”

Peter dips his head to Ben and then disappears into the stacks, waving as he goes. Ben shakes his head, disoriented, and then returns to his letter.

_I’ve just been invited — commanded, maybe, is the better word — to something called Formal Hall this evening. Is this the thing you were telling me about, where the professors host all the students and there’s sherry and they show off? And we have to wear our caps and gowns? You’d do much better here than I’m going to, Hux, I can tell that much already. Switch places with me? I’d gladly kill a man rather than sit through some hoity-toity dinner with all these Oxford types._

He stops writing again, aware that he’s growing morbid, aware that he shouldn’t want to be anywhere but where he is: safe, protected from having to go to war. But already he is feeling like he doesn’t belong here, that this has all been a mistake. He wishes he could turn back time, undo the tremendous favour Luke has done him and his mother, and return home to Millennium House.

Ben sighs. _You’ve been here less than a day. Save the homesickness for later._ He finishes writing, forcing his words into cheeriness again, and then signs, seals, and addresses the missive, to be posted when he finds out where the post-boxes are. For now, he figures, his scout will have finished unpacking his things (something he could easily have done himself). He has some hours before this Formal Hall; he may as well sleep a while, and hope to dream of Hux.

The dinner is about as bad as Ben had expected. Subfusc — Oxford academic dress — is terribly uncomfortable; the gown chafes Ben’s neck and the mortarboard won’t stay put over his ears. Everyone in the hall seems already to know one another, and when he sits down, as unobtrusively as he can, at the end of one long table, everyone sitting near him hushes immediately and glances at him, their eyes raking over his face and his scar. A few of them frown, and then turn back to their colleagues, whispering. Ben flushes to his ears and pulls his glass of wine toward him.

No-one speaks to him all evening, but for the uniformed waiters — “Your soup, sir; your fish, sir” — and then a bespectacled older student who offers a distracted “Sorry” when his gown gets caught under Ben’s leg as he stands to go talk with someone else. Ben eats in silence (the food is good, at least), and accepts the alcohol offered him, although he can hardly stomach it. All around him, the hall seems to grow warmer, convivial chatter floating to the high vaulted ceiling; the president of the college makes an address and Ben doesn’t absorb a word.

He wishes Hux were here, to make sly comments in his ear, tease him with what they’d do back in Ben’s digs when it was over. He wishes he were in France: being shot at would be preferable to being ignored like this, to having those _looks_ sent at him. He hears Hux telling him, _It wasn’t your fault,_ but he didn’t believe him then and he still doesn’t now.

As soon as the food is cleared and the tables are pushed back for dancing (nothing rowdy, only a stately waltz), Ben takes advantage of the organised confusion to slink back to his rooms. He tears the gown from his shoulders as he goes. He falls back into bed, knows that because of his earlier nap he’ll have a sleepless night. Classes begin at eight o’clock sharp the next morning. He lies there, miserable, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, until the dark finally pulls him under, into nightmares again.

 

* * *

 

His matriculation exams are hard; he manages. His lectures are long and draining; he manages. He doesn’t speak unless spoken to in his tutorials, and ignores the titters and glances his scar and his accent still constantly receive; he manages. He makes no friends; he joins no clubs; he keeps entirely to himself. He manages — for the first weeks, at least; and then the trouble begins.

Already, by late October, many of the freshman boys have started disappearing, as their birthdays come and they go gleefully off to war. Soon enough, Ben is one of the very few who are left, easily the youngest in his living quarters — and people begin to notice. Now, coupled with the whispers that trail him (the scar, it seems, is boundlessly fascinating to all who pass him by, here as on the train), are those altogether more sinister ones. _Coward. Feather-man. Traitor._

“I’m not,” Ben finally bursts out one day, utterly fed-up, whirling to face the passing duo who’d spit the cruel words at his back. Two older girls, obviously exempt from the army and thus feeling themselves justified in calling him a traitor as they passed him on the quad. “I’m _not_ a traitor! And I’m not a coward, either!”

“What are you, then?” asks one of them, boldly, hugging her books to her chest with an insolent air. “Retarded? Deformed? Why wouldn’t they take you?”

Her friend gives a vicious giggle. Ben is too inflamed to worry about holding his tongue around a woman, so he spits right back at the first girl: “I’m not a bloody _citizen!_ That’s why they won’t have me, all right? I’d go if I could! I’m sick of it, of your _assumptions!_ You don’t know anything about me!”

Mercifully, the sound of his accent seems to convince them — the other girl, who’d giggled, looks suitably cowed, and tugs on her friend’s arm. “Come on, Rose; you were wrong. We made a mistake,” she apologises to Ben. “So sorry. Rose’s beau is at the front, you see, and she doesn’t understand why anyone _wouldn’t_ be, if he could —”

“We all have someone at the front,” Ben cuts her off, with perhaps too much bitterness. He thinks of Hux, of how distant he’d been when last he saw him, and his anguish comes pouring out. “We _all_ do, and that gives you no right to accost strangers and demand of them why they aren’t! God, I wish — I wish you’d all just leave me alone. I _tried_ to join up, believe me, but they wouldn’t let me.” _They wouldn’t let me go with him._

“We’re sorry. We are, really.” The other girl, not Rose, looks frightened, now: Ben realises he has stepped quite close to the girls, and towers over them. His hands have clenched into fists, which have been raised without his noticing. They are alone on the quad, and it’s getting dark: he has threatened them without meaning to.

He steps back. “It’s all right,” he says, gruffly, lowering his hands and unclenching them. He feels ashamed, and hates that he does, for it was not his fault; they started this. “I didn’t mean to get so angry. It’s just — I’ve just —”

“It’s nothing.” Rose speaks up, now, and her brashness has gone. “We’ll just — go. Forget about it. Sorry.”

And they scurry away, darting glances back at him over their shoulders. Ben waits until they have gone, and then leans up against a nearby tree, feeling defeated and useless. He’s angry with himself for having burst out at the girls like that, but angrier still with the government, who have first taken Hux from him, and then cheated him, set him apart like this. _It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault, and I’m punished for it every day._ He makes it back to his room before the tears come.

And that is hardly the worst of it. A few days later, Ben opens his door — already late to morning Latin, a language he likes learning much less without Hux’s counsel and praise — to find a pile of white feathers on his doorstep.

Immediately he understands. The White Feather Movement, the women who hand out feathers to un-enlisted men they judge fit for service: a nasty, vindictive, selfish lot, in Ben’s opinion, but highly regarded as heroes by the general public. And, obviously, by the students here who have seen fit to emulate their noble goals by slitting open a pillow and dumping its bowels onto Ben’s stoop.

He swears, aloud, looking down at the mess. Two pillows, perhaps. Luckily most of his stairway have already gone to their first lectures of the day, but those few denizens who have popped out from their rooms as he has been standing here have snickered in his direction and made no move to help. His scout, Ben knows, will clean it up for him, as he has to get to class — but he cannot bring himself to go and fetch him.

In the end, he doesn’t need to: just as Ben is kneeling to begin clearing up the mess, there is the sound of a familiar tread from down the hall. His scout, Wharton, hurries over to Ben, his kind old face creasing. “Mr Organa-Solo? What’s happened here?”

“It’s nothing,” Ben answers, clenching his teeth. “Really, Wharton. I’m fine, I can clear this up.” He glances up at the old man, and feels sicker still to see the look of genuine concern on his face. Wharton understands Ben’s impossible predicament, and is sympathetic, in his quiet way, as no-one else has been.

“I insist, sir. Let me help you.” And Wharton disappears again, returning with a waste-bin, and then kneels at Ben’s side to help gather up the feathers. Ben hears the strain in his breathing as he eases his body to the floor, and feels even worse. _My fault, my fault, my fault._

They clear up the mess in silence. It takes a long time, longer than it should; in the meantime, people pop in and out of their rooms, come up and down the stairs, and Ben can feel their curious looks like ice-water down his back. He doesn’t look up from his task, methodically gathering handfuls of the damned white feathers and shoving them into the rubbish where they belong.

Finally the stoop is clear. Ben’s Latin lecture is half-over; there is no point going now, having to explain where he’d been. He stands up again, and offers Wharton his hand, feeling terrible for the old scout’s aching joints. “Thank you, Wharton. I’m sorry to interrupt your morning like that.”

“Don’t apologise, dear boy.” Wharton frowns up at him, and plucks a last feather from Ben’s hair. “Will that be all for now?”

“Yes, Wharton. I’ll see you — later.” Ben gestures uselessly, and Wharton nods again and hurries off to the scouts’ closet to pick up again with his regular tasks. The rubbish-bag of feathers bobs innocently in his hand.

Ben sighs. He has no desire to go to any of his other classes today — nor has he had, lately. He’ll lock himself in his room, and read, or sleep, and pretend this whole episode never happened. He won’t tell Hux. He can’t.

 

* * *

 

He is walking home from the library late one evening when he hears the voices. Ben stops in his tracks, looks around — there is no-one about — and then follows the sounds.

“Hun.”

“Boche.”

“Baby-killer.”

Between each hateful name, the dull thud of a punch. Cruel, brutish laughter, and strained inhalations of pain.

“Please. Please, I’m not — I was born here — my mother —”

Another punch, harder this time, and now the sound of a body hitting the cobbled ground. A short, sharp cry, unable to be held in as the others have been. Ben creeps closer to the scene, but stays hidden, his books held to his chest. He peers around the corner.

“Shut your mouth, Fritz, or we’ll shut it for you.”

Ben doesn’t know the man speaking by name, but recognises him as a first-year like himself. He has a lecture with him, Ben thinks, although he could not say which one. He’s standing over someone on the ground — a figure curled into itself for protection — and is surrounded by two or three other young men, lurking at his shoulders with cold glee on their faces. “Bet you wish you were in Belgium, don’t you? Bet you wish you were killing our men for your Kaiser.”

He punctuates _Kaiser_ with a kick to the huddled figure’s gut. The boy on the ground gives a keen of pain, and the standing men laugh uproariously. The tormented boy moans, shifts on the ground, and turns his bleeding face into the light.

He does not see Ben, but Ben sees him, and knows him: Peter Hahn, the young man who’d delivered his Formal Hall invitation on his very first night at Oxford. Blond, and with a foreign accent. Hahn. The boy is German.

The men have ceased their taunts now, and turned to kicks instead. In eerie silence, they encircle Peter Hahn, and deliver blows to his prone body, one-by-one. Ben cannot look away: it is as some arcane, profane ritual; a sacrifice, it seems. Peter Hahn is sobbing, bleeding, but he does not make a sound.

He moves his head again to protect it from their blows. As he does, his gaze shifts. He sees Ben in the shadows.

A flash of recognition: hope. His eyes plead.

Ben hesitates. A moment, an awful moment, in which the assault does not cease, and Peter Hahn’s eyes seem to grow clouded.

Ben turns his back. He carries on to his rooms and ignores the thin wail of pain that trails him.

_He deserves it more than I do._

 

* * *

 

During Ben’s first week-end at Oxford, on the eleventh of October, Hux and his men are moved down the line to Hazebrouck. All next day is a cavalry operation; Hux and the others spend the day in the trench, waiting, restless, and then at night they advance. They take Mont des Cats. The next day, in the misty damp, Outtersteene and Meteren are seized by the Allies. The Germans flee. Victory, victory.

(All the same, no-one speaks anymore about all this being over by Christmas.)

That night, they will take the Germans’ trenches.

“Rumour has it they’re nicer than ours,” opines one of Hux’s men, Green, at supper that night. They will start the raid when dark has fallen. “Better built, and all. Don’t leak.”

“Won’t that be a treat,” says Mayville, wistfully. “No more wet boots.”

“Proper beds, d’you think?”

“Real bunks. No more funk-holes.”

The men carry on, adding fantasy after fantasy, wonder after wonder to the German trenches, their voices growing louder with each wish, until Hux raises his voice above them in a teasing rebuke: “Will you all be defecting, then? Shall we dress you in their uniforms?”

He flourishes a showman’s hand to the rotting bodies of two German prisoners laid-out in the corner, left there by the previous occupants of their current trench as trophies — or grim reminders, should the other side ever succeed in taking this trench. Hux smirks: “They won’t be needing them anymore.”

The men laugh uproariously and wolf down their stew, keyed-up from a day of battle and hungering for the raid ahead. Their side has only lost seven hundred men these past few action-filled days; they are feeling invincible.

After they all have eaten, Hux glances up at the sky and finds it clear, the full moon hanging low. Several of his men follow his gaze — their talk quietens, and no-one says anything, each man as eager as a boy on Christmas morning, waiting to be given the word to dive at the presents under the tree. It is dark enough, Hux gauges. He looks around at his men:

“It’s time.”

Smiles, passed between them. These young men — boys — are like dogs to the hunt. They rise, a pack, and fetch their guns.

Six men, Hux in the lead, leave the other fourteen behind, disappointment and envy writ large on their faces. Hux chose the smallest, quickest, quietest men: not Hayworth, too tall, not Adams, too stocky. The men he has chosen are also, coincidentally, among the youngest, and he swallows his guilt for this. He is capable; he will not let them come to harm. 

“Good luck, sir. Lads.” Barton, one of Hux’s subalterns, is in charge for the time being, and he nods to them as they scale the ladder at the front of the trench.

Hux is last up; he lays a hand on Barton’s shoulder, and says, “Take care.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hux returns his salute and then is up, over, into No-Man’s Land.

They have traversed this wasteland in the daytime, crawling on their bellies, rifles in front, while being shot at and shelled, while men screamed and moaned and died around them. This is much easier. Dark, yes — one cannot see the corpses; Hux thought Green would vomit when his elbow landed in one’s bloated stomach, but to the boy’s credit he refrained. The snipers cannot see them, the living, either; but lazy volleys are sent out on occasion, more out of habit than suspicion.

They creep in total silence across the last few yards of No-Man’s Land, shells fired from their side exploding occasionally at their backs, answering German ones whizzing mercifully over their ducked heads. Hux can hear the other men’s tense breathing and knows that they, too, are praying not to be hit, not now, when the battle has ended and they are so close to their goal: the trench.

Here it is now, looming in front of them chasm-like, the pit at Delphi, a seam of dim light in the dark and ruined earth. Hux sees Randall, a Catholic, make the sign of the cross when it comes into view, sees his lips moving in a silent prayer of thanks. Hux beckons his men to him, and they stand and line up, huddled low.

“We enter there.” Hux points, his voice hardly audible. “Follow me, watch for my signals, _do not_ jump in until I say. Is that clear?”

Nods from all of them.

“Ready?” Their bodies tensing in unison, prepared to spring forth at Hux’s signal. But —

A hand flies up, a darker silhouette against the night. Hux turns. “Private.”

Kitteridge lowers his hand, swallows visibly. “What do we do? Sir?” His face is so pale in the dark. “If there are — men?”

Hux looks him in the eyes. “Take a guess, Private,” he says. The words could have been cruel, but he softens his tone. “They’ll have to be…dealt with.”

Kitteridge understands. He swallows, nodding, and steps back into line.

“Any other questions?” Hux hopes not: they are so close, now; if they are detected they will never make it back to their side alive. There are head-shakes all down the line. “Good.” Hux jerks his head. “Follow me.”

And now they set upon the trench, scaling the parapet with war-cries. The snipers yell belated warnings and take aim, but Hux and Morris, the lieutenant at his side, are too quick, dispatching them with single shots before they can be hit themselves. The other men are already inside the trench, storming down the corridors and shouting. Surprised, terrified, angry Germans poke their heads from where they slept or worked inside the anthill of the trench. Hux can hear his own men following orders, the sharp report of a rifle or a handgun as the enemy are _dealt with_ one-by-one.

He enters the fracas with his gun up, and dispatches two men straight off. Two hulking blonds who fall to the ground with identical looks of shock on their faces, identical bullet-holes in their chests. Hux soon loses track of time; he may join in the shouting, _Filthy Boches, filthy pigs!,_ but he cannot be certain. The white smoke surrounds him and adrenalin fills his blood as he and his men take the trench.

(He has grown to love this, the mess and brutality of battle. The fact of this should terrify him, but only makes him fight the harder. He pulls the trigger again, again, and bodies fall around him.)

In the end there is only one man left. When the smoke at last has cleared and Hux has ordered his men, crisply, to lower their weapons, there is one German soldier still living, his hands half-raised near his ears, as if he’s afraid they’ll be seen above the parapet if he puts them all the way up. He looks to be shaking. He is, Hux realises, very young: Kitteridge’s age, if not even younger.

He, like the rest, will have to be dealt with. Hux steps forward, rifle shouldered.

“Out,” Hux tells the trembling soldier coldly, in German. “The trench is ours now. Get out of our way, or see what will happen.” He jerks his head to the slumped bodies of the young man’s comrades.

Hux’s own men are staring at him in amazement — they have never heard him speak German before, much less threaten a man’s life. The young German is staring at him, miserable, beginning to cry. Hux realises that his eyes are wide and deep-brown; his hair, cut short beneath his helmet, is thick, and black as night. There is a mole on his left cheek.

Hux swallows around the sudden tightness in his throat. He realises for the first time that he is bleeding from a cut on his face. “Move,” he says again, when the soldier _(Ben, Ben, he looks like Ben)_ remains frozen and quivering. _“Move!”_

All at once angry, he draws his bayonet. The young man cries out, and even Hux’s men sound startled, taking a step back. He pays them no mind. He puts the tip of the blade to the German soldier’s chest.

 _“Ich will nach Hause.”_ The boy finally speaks. His voice is quiet, choked with fear, hard to hear at all — and then it rises, swelling sharply up with panic as Hux presses the blade in a little harder. _“Bitte! Bitte nicht! T_ _ö_ _tet mich nicht! Ich will nach Hause!”_

But the boy will never see his home, wherever it is, again. Hux sinks the bayonet between his ribs. He sees the dark eyes widen, and the lips part: they are full, too, like Ben’s. Hux cannot bear it, suddenly. He pulls the blade out with violence, and the German boy gives a last scream, garbled, as the blood pumps from his chest, from the now-open, undammed wound. It sprays Hux’s hands, staining them red. The boy falls, silent, his eyes still fixed on Hux’s, his mouth open in a last cry of fright. He falls, and he does not rise again.

Hux steps over the body. “Come along,” he tells his stunned men. “Gather everything you can carry. The trench is ours.”

It has been a successful raid.

Hux is promoted to captain three days later. They are billeted in Armentières; he writes to Ben after too long a silence. The words, though, betray him.

_There was a boy in the trench; the last one, alone, all his friends dead around him. I did what I had to do: I killed him. I killed him and they have ranked me higher for it. I killed him and was rewarded. I killed him and he looked like you and I felt no remorse. I liked it, Ben, I think I liked it. What’s wrong with me? Am I losing my mind? He looked like you. He looked like you. He’s dead now and he looked like you._

He has taken the rum ration, tonight. He needs it. He has sent Mitaka away, to sew the new stripe on his uniform; he is alone in his room and the candle is burning low. He thinks he sees blood on his hands, but when he brings them closer to his face, nothing is there. They are raw from washing.

The boy looked like Ben. He haunts his dreams, now, only he is not dead; he is alive and warm, so warm. Hux is not killing him but fucking him. He cries out when Hux’s cock breaches him, just as he had when his bayonet slipped between his ribs. Hux fucks him in a pool of blood and wakes up sweating and hard.

 _I burn to touch you,_ he writes to Ben. _I want to bury myself inside you again; I want the heat of you around me, as your cock comes to life in my hand. I want you to scream my name. I want to hurt you; I want you to hurt me. Make me bleed, Ben, I deserve it. Maybe then I’ll know I’m still alive at all._

He burns the letter. The nightmares stay long after the smoke has gone.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I very much do not currently attend Oxford, nor did I attend it in the autumn of 1914, so I apologise for any inaccuracies (and I am sure there are many.) I am indebted to [The Absolutist](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13414716-the-absolutist) by John Boyne for details of life at Aldershot training camp as well as in the trenches; it's also one of my favourite books of all time and I can't recommend it highly enough, especially if you're up for crying multiple times. ;)
> 
> I'm on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com)!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for minor character death and non-graphic combat.

* * *

 

“Nurse! _Nurse!”_ The man wakes screaming in the middle of the night.

In an instant, Rey is there, hurrying down the makeshift ward. “I’m here,” she soothes in a whisper, kneeling at his bedside. “What is it, sir? What do you need?”

This is not the first time she has comforted him. His name is James Corcoran; he is a second lieutenant with the 15th Sherwood Foresters. He is twenty-three years old, and he lost his entire platoon in the attack where he was wounded. He has been fighting pneumonia, and thus far winning, but although his other external affliction — a shot to the right arm — is almost fully healed, his internal ones go much deeper.

“Bailey,” Corcoran whispers, his eyes still closed, his face contorted in anguish. “Owen. Jackson. They’re gone.” His hands reach blindly in front of him, grasping at nothing. “They’re all gone.”

“I know,” Rey whispers. “I know, James. But you’re here. You’re safe.” Around them, men are grumbling, awoken by his cries. Rey ignores them; they’ll fall asleep again soon enough. “Do you need anything?” she asks again. “Water? Here, drink.”

She lifts the cup to his lips, and, still without opening his eyes, Corcoran mouths helplessly at the water. It streams over his cracked and chapped lips and dribbles onto his blanket. Rey takes the cup away and wipes his chin. His breathing is no longer so frantic as it had been, although it still carries the pneumonia’s harshness, and his grasping hands have come to rest on the blankets at his side. Finally, his eyes open, and he looks about in confusion before focusing on Rey. She can practically see his imagined surroundings fading, replaced with the safe reality of the ward.

“Nurse Skywalker,” mumbles the officer. “Was I —?”

Rey nods. “Nightmares again,” she says gently. “But you calmed down easier than last time. You came back to yourself much more quickly. You’re getting better, James. I promise.” She smiles, and brushes the hair off his sweat-dampened brow.

The young man is embarrassed; he won’t meet her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve probably woken the whole ward.” He frowns, shame cut deeply into his face.

“It doesn’t matter.” Rey stands from her crouch, wincing when her sore heels take her weight again. “Do you think you’ll be able to sleep again?”

She has the rest of her rounds to do, but is reluctant to leave Corcoran alone. He is a gentle, reserved man in the daytime, keeping much to himself between bouts of physical therapy with Rey or the other nurses, reading book after book and speaking infrequently; it is only at night that his voice is ever raised, in terror. Rey knows he feels guilt for being the only one in his platoon to escape alive, and she’s tried to remind him that it wasn’t his fault; but she knows he doesn’t believe her. He was responsible for nineteen men and he could only save himself.

Corcoran hesitates. “Yes,” he says. He sighs, squeezing the blanket in his fist and then releasing it. Rey knows he dreads the nighttime, when he no longer has control over his mind or his words.

“Would you like me to stay a little longer?” she offers, and Corcoran turns to her with a look of relief.

“Yes.”

Rey smiles. “I’m right here,” she tells him. She takes up his hand and strokes her thumb over it. Corcoran closes his eyes, and slowly his face relaxes, his furrowed brow smoothing. Rey hums softly, a lullaby, she thinks, and stays with him until his breathing evens out.

She releases his hand and carries on with her rounds, straightening blankets, refilling glasses of water, exchanging a few quiet words with those few men who are awake and restless. She feels herself a benevolent spirit, bringing comfort where she goes; she has always liked the night-shift.

When her shift is over and Jess Pava comes out to relieve her, Rey thanks her, hands off her clipboard, and checks on James Corcoran again before going upstairs. He is deeply asleep, and looks peaceful. Rey smiles, and then mounts the stairs to her bedroom to snatch some rest before the next day’s work begins.

 In the morning, however, James takes a turn for the worse. Rey is at the other end of the ward, laughing with one of the walking-wounded men as she teaches him to use his new cane, when Jess comes over and tells her quietly, “One of the men is asking for you.”

“Who?” Rey frowns.

“Corcoran.” Jess’s face is grave. “I’d hurry, Rey.”

“Excuse me, Henry,” Rey tells the captain with the cane, leaving Jess to take over and rushing down the ward.

Sometime in the night, Corcoran began to run a fever. He’s sweating when Rey reaches him, his blankets thrown off and his shirt sticking wet to his chest. Another nurse is tending to him, but she steps back when Rey arrives, saying, “He only wanted you.”

“James,” Rey breathes, kneeling at his side and taking up his hot clammy hand, just as she had the night before. “Oh, James, what’s the matter with you? What’s happened?”

Corcoran’s breathing is stertorous, laboured, and he doesn’t reply. His eyes flutter; his cheeks are flushed and hot. Rey looks at the other nurse, Hattie, in desperate confusion.

“The pneumonia has worsened,” Hattie explains grimly, consulting her notes. “He’s had it before. Somehow it didn’t kill him then, but it seems hell-bent to now.”

In the bed, James coughs, the low, wet, sinister cough of a man whose lungs are drowning themselves. Rey gazes down at him, distraught. Just two days ago she had told him that he’d be ready to leave them in no time.

The sick man’s cracked lips part. “Rey,” he says, hoarsely, or Rey thinks he does. “Rey.”

“Thank you, Hattie.” Rey stands and takes the clipboard from her, and then sits down on the patient’s bed once Hattie has bustled off. “Hello, James,” she says. “I’m here.”

Corcoran’s eyes open. They are too bright, pellucid with fever, and they fix on her. “Am I dying?” he asks her, barely audibly. He does not sound afraid.

“No,” Rey tells him immediately. “Of course not. You’ve just got a spot of fever. We’ll fix you up, you’ll see.” His hand in hers is so hot; every crackling breath is harsh and painful to her ears.

“Owen,” he tells her. “Bailey. Jackson. Porter. DeWitt.” He coughs, coughs. “Williams. Holland.” He names each of his nineteen men, coughing between them, and Rey wants to beg him to stop, but she sees that he needs to do this. “They’re gone. All gone. Owen — Porter — I miss them.” He is crying, now, and Rey reaches for a cloth and wipes his tears in silence. “I failed them.”

“Shh,” she soothes him. “Shh, James. You did everything you could. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”

She stays with him, again, until he has calmed. His breathing grows more strained still; she can almost hear the fluid filling his lungs. It has all happened so fast.

“I have to go,” Rey says, when his tears have subsided and his eyes drifted shut again. “I’ll be back. I promise you I will.”

He squeezes her hand, limply, in response, and then lets it go.

Rey goes through the rest of her shift in a state of agitation. She is too rough when changing one man’s dressing; she nearly spills her pitcher several times; she snaps at the man who calls her beautiful when he thanks her for fluffing his pillow. Finally the dinner-gong sounds, and instead of going to eat she hurries back to James’ side.

He is declining: she can see that even from afar. Another nurse is watching him, but she stands wordlessly when Rey arrives. She takes her place at his side and takes his hand again, feeling tears come to her eyes.

“I’m back,” she whispers. “Just like I promised.”

Corcoran doesn’t open his eyes. His soft brown hair is mussed and wet, stuck to his forehead. Someone has tucked him in again and he lacks the strength to throw the covers off. “Rey,” he says. “Rey, I must — come here. Come closer.”

She leans in closer to him, anxious, straining to hear his next words. “What is it?”

His blue eyes blink open, and a feeble smile curves his lips. “Marry me,” he requests. “When I’m better. When I’m out of here. I’d be good to you.”

“Oh, James.” Rey moves her hand so he can feel the engagement ring on her finger. “I’m promised to someone else. To Poe. You know that.”

“No harm in trying.” James’ next breath must be painful; he winces when he inhales, and when he coughs, his lips are speckled red. Rey wipes them with the cloth and feels her eyes growing wet.

“You’ll come to our wedding,” she promises him. “You’ll get better, and the war will end and Poe will come home, and we’ll be married. You’ll wear your good suit and I’ll save a dance for you. Won’t that be good?” She swipes at her face with her sleeve.

James smiles, and leans back on the pillow, nodding. “Tell me how it’ll be,” he requests. “When the war is over.”

“Well — getting telegrams will be something nice again, and not so frightful as it is now.” Hesitantly at first, but soon growing bolder, Rey tells him everything that will happen when at last the war is won. She spins a marvellous tale of peace and joy and feels tears streaming down her cheeks with every word. James’ grip on her hand grows steadily weaker, his breathing ever harsher.

She is still telling her story when those awful breaths stop altogether. His hand grows limp in hers, and then falls to the blankets. He is with his men again.

Rey is crying, silently. She wipes her face and then leans down and presses her lips to James Corcoran’s cold cheek. She fumbles blindly for her chart and records the time of his passing, and then shoves it at the first nurse she sees — Hattie, her face concerned — and runs down the ward, barely suppressing her sobs.

On her way to the foyer, she bumps into Caroline, quite literally. “Nurse Skywalker!” the matron exclaims, steadying Rey by the shoulders. “Why, what on earth’s the matter?”

“One of them died,” Rey explains, her voice thick. “He was doing so well — he would have gone, soon. But he was sick, and it got worse. It was all so sudden.” She breaks off, choking back tears.

“Oh, Aurelia.” The matron presses Rey into her arms, and then releases her, looking down with deep sympathy in her clear blue eyes. “You’d never seen a man die before.”

Rey shakes her head. “And he proposed to me,” she confesses miserably. “He took a liking to me, and I liked him, too. Not like that, of course — I have Poe — but he was so sweet… Oh, Matron,” she bursts out, her brow knit, “what will I do if Poe doesn’t come home? I should have — I should’ve insisted that he marry me before he left. What if he gets wounded, or ill like James? What if I never see him again?”

Caroline takes Rey by the arm and leads her to sit down in the library, removed from the busyness of the rest of the house. In the quiet, she puts an arm around the younger girl and lets her cry her worries into the shoulder of her starched-white uniform. “You will see him again,” Caroline tells her. “He’ll marry you, just like he promised. He won’t leave you alone.”

“And Finn,” Rey whispers, raising her head. “What if I lose them both? Anything could happen, at any time —”

“So there’s no use worrying,” Caroline interrupts her firmly. She looks her in the eye. “If you spend every moment thinking about what could be happening to them, you’ll never be able to do anything at all. You must be brave and carry on.”

Rey sees the sense in this. She nods, listlessly, and gives a sigh. “I have been,” she says. “I have been doing that — I try not to worry, and most times I’m all right. It’s just — now this…”

“It’s close to home. I understand.” Caroline pats her shoulder, and then rises from the couch. “I must get back. You still have ten minutes for tea, but please, take longer,” she tells her. “Go eat something, and then relax a little while. You’ve had a long day.”

“Thank you.” Rey smiles tiredly.

Caroline leaves, back to her duties. After a moment, composing herself, Rey leaves the library and fetches her tea in the dining-room. She eats her soup and sandwich pensively, thinking of her boys, reminding herself of what she’d told Ben: that she’d feel something, if anything happened to them. Despite her fears she still believes this.

After she has eaten she returns to the library, writing-things in hand. She sets down to write her weekly overflowing, chatty letter to Finn and Poe, going day-by-day and telling them all her news; but when she gets to this morning, she stops.

_One of the men in our care died very unexpectedly this morning. He had been ill as well as wounded, and although he seemed to be getting stronger, the sickness overpowered him in the end. He had lost all his men in the attack that wounded him and felt a deal of guilt for it. I think that in the end, he simply lost the will to go on without them._

Her pen hovers over the page, threatening to leave a blot. She will not tell them of the proposal, or the kiss. James is dead now; it is their secret; her boys need never know. She feels it would be disrespectful to Corcoran’s memory to share his last moments with anyone: the exquisite tragedy of his final hours and words.

She wipes the nib, writes a few closing words, sends them her love.

_Only a few weeks until we’re together again. I miss you every day. Your Rey._

 

* * *

 

“I have good news, lads. Your training will be finishing early.”

Sergeant Draven stands in front of the whole training camp in the mess-hall, arms folded across his chest, as he waits for the news to sink in. A wave of excited murmurs makes its way through the mess, heads turning, grins spreading. Poe and Finn look at one another and see their own joy mirrored in the other’s eyes: _Soon we’ll be home to Rey._

But after a moment, in which the volume and level of happiness in the mess have both risen to a near fever-pitch, Draven holds up a hand. His bulldoggish face is as impassive and humourless as ever.

“It’s finishing early because you’re needed at the front straightaway. There will be no embarkation leave.”

The mess falls abruptly silent: a bubble, popped. Now the murmurs that rise up are of dismay, and soon enough, turn into voiced protests: “They can’t do that, sir! That’s not fair!”

“Life isn’t fair, Mr Derrick, and neither is war. Tomorrow morning you take the train for Folkestone, and then you’ll ship to Belgium.” Draven surveys the crowd with steely eyes. Every man in the mess hates him and he knows it. “I suggest you use what remains of your leisure time tonight to write to your families and pack your things. Lecture will begin at 2000 hours, as usual. Dismissed.”

The men rise slowly from their benches and clear their plates, muttering mutinously amongst themselves and casting searing looks in Draven’s direction. Several men look ready to spit on him or worse, the fear of further discipline clearly all that’s holding them back. Poe sets his dishes beside Finn’s with a clatter, and then wordlessly they walk back to barracks, their steps slow and gloomy.

“We were so close,” Finn says finally, voicing both their thoughts, as they enter the barracks, finding a few members of their platoon already packing, eyes downcast. “Six weeks in. Only three more to go, and then home.” He pulls his luggage from under his cot and begins methodically to pack up his kit, hardly seeing it.

“You never know,” Poe suggests, ever the optimist, folding his vests with care. “I’m sure we’ll be able to get leave before too long.”

“I don’t think so,” says another voice, from the cot across from Finn’s. Roger Elliston, a towheaded nineteen-year-old from Birmingham, is looking at them with glum eyes. “My brother has been out since September and he still hasn’t gotten any leave. Doesn’t think he will until Christmas, at least.”

Several other men have heard this, as is evidenced by the sighs and soft curses now uttered. “Well, all right, then, but at least we’ll be in Flanders!” Poe reminds them, looking around. “That’s what we’re here for, aren’t we? We _left_ home to come fight, and now we’re given the chance, we want to go right back. Where’s the fun in that?” He grins, cheekily, and is rewarded with half-smiles from some of the others.

“Better brush up on our French,” pipes in another of the men, looking up from the letter he’s dashing off. “I hear the girls are prettier across the Channel.”

“Bad luck, Jenkins,” says a comrade, mussing his hair. “They speak Dutch where we’re going. Imagine they look Dutch, too.”

“They speak French, too! My cousin’s there, he told me!”

“All right, then, if your cousin knows everything, did he tell you what to say to all the _French-speaking_ Belgian ladies?”

“What? No.”

 _“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi,_ Jenkins. Five little words; you won’t lose.”

“What?” Jenkins looks confused, and the others burst into laughter. The disappointment of cancelled leave is slowly being subsumed by the prospect of adventure.

In the remaining twenty minutes until evening lecture, the barracks — bare to begin with — are stripped more spartan still, the men’s books and writing-things and spare clothes disappearing into haversacks and cases. Poe and Finn write jointly to Rey, apologising and telling her not to worry, and send the letter off with the other men’s hasty missives. Several of them polish their boots, carefully, like little boys going off to Sunday school, and sit them at the ends of their cots, shining, patient, eager.

No-one pays attention in lecture, and finally the colour-sergeant, a gentler man than Draven, throws up his hands and lets them go early. “Get some sleep,” he warns them, as they troop out, laughing and shoving one another. “You’ve a long journey ahead.”

That night, when the others are falling asleep, Poe reaches for Finn’s hand, as he does every night. They look at one another in the dark: “To the front,” Poe whispers. “Finally.”

Finn can practically feel the exuberance radiating from him; but he himself is not so sure. “Yes,” he whispers back. He squeezes Poe’s hand, uncertainly, but gets a smile all the same.

While Finn knows that Poe will do just fine in combat — he’s level-headed, brave, practically fearless — Finn is worried, and has been from the beginning, that his nerves will overtake him and paralyse him at some crucial moment. He has had nightmares of seeing Poe attacked, and being unable to leap in and save him because it would mean killing another man, hand-to-hand, seeing him die. Nightmares of pausing with his finger on the trigger, unable to fire, and being mown down, helpless, instead. And yet it is not for his own safety that he fears; he can’t stand the thought of letting down the other men, or England, or Poe.

Poe lets go his hand, whispers “Goodnight.” Finn says it back and then turns over to face the wall. He closes his eyes, but sees only disaster behind them. His heart is racing; he is not prepared; they are three weeks behind in training, still. Surely he is not the only one who feels this way, but the others are feigning sleep better.

Finn stares into the darkness until finally he falls asleep. His dreams are full of blood.

 

* * *

 

In the morning they are not cadets anymore, they are real soldiers. At nine o’clock, a long slow ride to the coast — the troop-train goes ten miles an hour, the men can hop off and walk alongside, even race it. When they stop for dinner they wash their dusty hands and faces in a stream, and fill their canteens with the cold clear water. In the afternoon they arrive at the port of Folkestone and from there they take ship for Belgium and the war.

The crossing is rough: a storm. The air had been growing chill throughout the day, the sky dark and sinister, and the clouds broke as they left the port. The ship is tossed about, the men too. Everywhere are green faces and miserable moans. The lucky ones sleep, Poe and Finn included; and when they wake, night has fallen, and they are in Flanders.

They leave Zeebrugge port and march through the night. It is still raining, hard, turning into sleet as the hours wear on. The men had been loud and chatty in the morning, leaving camp at Aldershot, but all day, they have grown more subdued; and now, late, everyone is quiet. Many of them look haggard; fear is beginning to show on some faces, as they go deeper into the countryside. Thunderous booms can be heard even above the howl of the wind, far away at first and then growing closer: the men look around them, confused, unable to place the sounds, until their new CO, a handsome dark-haired man called Emmett — Draven stayed behind at Aldershot — tells them, “Guns, lads. We’re getting close.”

They arrive in the line close to midnight, swapping places with an exhausted platoon who have been through several days of shelling. “They’ve been harassing us for days,” the other CO tells Emmett, shouldering his rifle and wiping sleet from his brow. “The French’ve been holding them off as best they can, up by Wytschaete, but we think they’ve been trying to wear us down before a push. Good luck.”

Emmett nods, taking this all in stride — “Thank you, sir; to you as well” — but the men, crowded behind him in the trench, look bewildered. The sky over No-Man’s Land is lit near-constantly with the flares of shells, bright-white, and multi-coloured Very lights. Every few seconds is a pop, whistle, and crash, at which each of the new men, no matter how nonchalant they try to appear, all flinch.

The departing CO notices, when young Jenkins nearly jumps out of his skin at a particularly loud report. “You’ll get used to it,” he tells him, patting his shoulder in a manly way. “Get used to just about anything, out here.”

The men bed down in funk-holes, the officers in bunks, minus the unlucky lot whose first sentry duty is right now. Poe has the right to a bunk but he does not even think to take it, insisting that poor Jenkins, whose eyes have widened so far over the course of this long day that they seem like to swallow his face any minute, sleep there instead and get himself warm.

Poe and Finn find a funk-hole together, and curl in as best they can; they are removed from the main trench, and besides, it is cold, no-one can fault them for holding each other so closely. Finn nestles into Poe’s arms, sighs against his chest. He is exhausted; they have been on their feet for hours, travelling all day; sleep is long overdue.

“Goodnight,” Poe whispers — just as last night, but in such different circumstances now.

“Goodnight,” Finn replies. As he closes his eyes, shivering, and tries to hold onto what warmth he can — tries to block out the shuddering boom of the guns, the whistling and flashing of the mortar-shells — he thinks grimly that no matter what the officers say, he will never get used to this.

He has no time to. They are awoken at dawn for stand-to, and then the shelling begins again. When the barrage finally ends they are sent over the top.

Three men deep in the trench, lining up. Emmett signals, blows his whistle, and out they go, fifteen men, up the ladder and over the sandbags on the parapet. Some of them scream as they go, hard angry cries, and others, trembling, are silent. “Next line-up,” comes the call, and Finn and Poe step forward.

 _Five, four, three, two, one,_ Finn counts, his heart pounding, his palms wet. All around them, noise, salvos of bullets and shells fired from both sides. He can’t think. He struggles to remember his training, how to fire the Smilie rifle, how to use his bayonet — _under and up, under and up —_ “Over!”, comes the order, and he is stepping forward, grasping the rungs, hauling himself out of the trench and into No-Man’s Land.

Finn does not know how long they are out there; he only knows that they come back.

He and Poe have survived. The rest of their platoon, too: the “hate” today, apparently, is light; they are lucky. If this is light then Finn never wants to see a heavy bombardment. Back in the trench his ears are ringing and he is shaking, he cannot stop; but Poe wraps an arm around him and says, “We’re all right. You’re all right.”

Bodies. No-Man’s Land was thick was bodies, in various states of decay. Arms and legs here and there. A head, once, horrible. Rats everywhere, even in the trench. They gnaw on the dead and no longer have any fear. One crawled over Finn’s hand as he lay on his belly and aimed his rifle at a German — and his worst fear came true: his finger froze on the trigger, he could not fire. The blond stranger approached, his face bloodied and fearful, and Finn’s heart stuck in his throat — but then the German was felled by some unseen shot, and Finn was saved. He kept moving. He kept crawling through the mud and muck. He fired his gun, he kept going, and now he is here. He is safe.

“I don’t want to do that again,” Finn murmurs, so only Poe can hear. Traitor’s talk, that is.

Poe laughs, too loudly, and rubs his arm: “We’ll get used to it,” he repeats, jovial as ever.

 But when Finn looks up at him he sees that Poe is shaken, too: there is a look of shock in his eyes above the broad, uncaring grin. There is a smear of blood on his cheek. Finn reaches up to wipe it away, and Poe looks surprised to see his hand wet: “Oh,” he says. “That’s not mine.”

Their eyes meet again. Poe’s jaw is set. Finn wants to go home.

That night Finn cannot sleep. When Poe returns from sentry duty (Finn, as Poe’s “servant,” is exempt), he wakes him, and try as he might he cannot slip under again. He holds Poe close to him — it has begun, miserably, to snow — and closes his eyes, lets his thoughts drift to Rey, to home, to the library at Millennium House, a book in his hand and the time stretching out like toffee, endless and golden and warm, a thousand summer Sundays —

Poe stiffens in his arms and mutters something in his sleep. Finn listens closer. There is wetness on his tunic, warmer than snow. Finn strokes Poe’s curls, murmurs his name, until Poe looks up, disoriented, his eyes damp with tears.

“You’re all right,” Finn tells him. They are alone; it is dark. He kisses him, gently, the first time he has done so in weeks. Poe exhales against his lips. One more kiss is all they can chance. “We’re all right.”

Poe strokes his cheek with his thumb. “I love you,” he tells him.

“I love you, too. Now and always.”

They fall asleep. The shells whirl and shriek through the unseeing sky.

 

* * *

 

The post comes to Millennium House and all the nurses flock to the little boy on his bike as if he were a messenger from heaven. They snatch battered letters from Flanders and France and exclaim and sigh over them, bringing the worn pages to their lips. Every day with good news, they breathe sighs of relief; Damocles’ sword still hangs.

(Already two girls have left them, deaths of brothers meaning their help is needed at home again. They don’t ever speak of these girls. Ill omens.)

Rey takes her own post back to the kitchen. She has a few minutes to herself this afternoon, and is spending them with Caroline, as she so often does these days: she looks up to the older woman, and is delighted to have been taken, somewhat, under her wing. Caroline has had a letter, too, and without a word they smile to one another before tearing into them.

After a few moments Rey sighs, looking up. “They’ve been fighting,” she informs Caroline, whose head is still bent over her own letter, her high brow furrowed in a frown. “Somewhere called Nonne…” She checks the page again. “Non Boss-chen,” she pronounces, carefully but wrongly.

“Nonne Bosschen,” Caroline corrects her, glancing up: _Bo-sheh,_ it sounds like to Rey. “That’s Dutch. Means _nun’s copse,_ I think.”

“You speak Dutch?” Rey is surprised, and delighted to know more: Caroline is a private person, and Rey feels honoured whenever she learns another tit-bit of her life.

“I am Dutch,” Caroline answers. “Half.” She glances at her letter again, still frowning. “Not that that matters, to them; not when the other half’s German. Never mind I’m London born and raised.”

“Matters to who?”

“The government,” says Caroline, a hard twist to her mouth. “They’ve evicted my parents from their home. They live on the coast and have a German last name; obviously that means they’re signalling to enemy submarines from their back garden.”

 _“What?”_ Rey looks outraged. “But that’s absurd! How can they do that? Where will they go now? If they have nowhere else, we can make room here,” she promises immediately.

Caroline shakes her head. “My mother is staying with a friend. And my father…my father is being interned.” She keeps her eyes on letter as if staring at the words will change them. “They’re — they’re locking him up as a prisoner of war.”

“Oh, _Caroline.”_ At once, with no care for the difference in their stations, Rey has come to her side, wrapped her arms around her neck. “Where?”

Caroline double-checks the letter: “Pattishall.”

“That’s near here! That’s not far away at all. Surely they’ll let you visit him?”

“I don’t know.” She falls silent, tersely scanning the page.

After a moment: “They won’t take you, too, will they?” Rey asks, quietly. “You’re doing war work; we need you.” Her eyes are anxious.

“No — it’s only the men,” Caroline says, finally setting the letter down. “For now, at least.” A faint smile appears on her face, but is quickly gone: “God help them if they try to take my mother.”

“How long will they keep him…imprisoned?” They both wince at the word. Rey sits down closer to Caroline and takes up her hand almost unconsciously, rubbing her thumb over the back of it.

Caroline shrugs. _“For the duration,_ my mother says they told her. Just like everything else.”

“For the duration,” Rey repeats. “What do you think _you’re_ going to do?” she asks her, hoping to distract her. “After the war.” She imbues those three words with all the magic they have come in the last months to possess.

Caroline looks surprised to be asked, but accepts the proffered diversion. She hesitates only a moment and then says, “Well, really, what I’d like to do is be a doctor.”

 _“Really?_ Could you? They’d let you train, I mean?” Rey’s eyes are wide and rapt. When Caroline nods, Rey sighs, dreaming already. “I’d _love_ to do that. I suppose I should train as a proper nurse, first, not a volunteer — shouldn’t I? How did you do it?”

“At school,” Caroline replies. “I was educated at a convent. Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows.” She gives a wry smile. “You could’ve called any of the nuns by that name, after they’d had to deal with me.”

“Caro! Were you _bad?”_ Rey asks, delighted.

“A terror,” Caro says confidentially, warming. “I didn’t want to be there, you see, but it was the best school we knew of and I’d won a scholarship. My parents were reluctant to send me elsewhere, for they’d have to pay. But I hated it.” She shakes her head, remembering. “All those nuns and all their rules.”

“Matron,” Rey says, pretending grave seriousness, “I hate to be the one to mention it, but…” She gestures to Caroline’s nursing habit with mischief in her eye.

Caroline laughs. “Oh, I know, I know — the irony of it all.”

“Why did you take holy orders, if you hated the convent so much?”

At this, Caro grows serious again. She sighs, and looks around her, to ensure they are alone. Rey frowns, surprised at the sudden change in tone. Caroline meets her eyes, utter solemnity there.

“Can I trust you, Aurelia?” She’ll allow Rey to nickname her, but never uses Rey’s.

Rey nods, her brows creasing. “Of course. What is it?”

“Well, it’s rather a long story.” She pauses, and then seems to make a decision: “Nothing to do but get on with it, I suppose. So. When I was…fourteen, it must’ve been, I had a very close friend. Her name was — well, it’s not important what her name was,” Caro corrects herself quickly. “In any case. We were both rather awful, at school — playing pranks on the other girls and the sisters, staying up past lights-out every night, singing music-hall tunes in chapel. It was innocent enough — until…”

She trails off, seeming reluctant to continue. Rey urges, softly, “You can trust me, I promise. Whatever it is.”

“In truth, our friendship was rather deeper than that,” Caro states baldly, looking up. “At least on my side. I…loved her, at least as much as one can love at that age; which in my experience is rather a lot.” She smiles, sadly. “Too much.”

“Oh, Caro. What happened? She didn’t —?”

The look in Caroline’s eyes is one of vulnerable relief. She shakes her head. “She _did_ love me back, at one time, at least; and that was the problem. One night the sisters found us together. We were kissing, that was all — but it was enough.” She sighs again. “My friend turned out to be a fickle one. As soon as she realised what was happening, she pushed me off her and started shrieking. Made out like I’d —  _assaulted_ her; as if she hadn’t been the one to kiss me first…”

“What happened?” Rey is heartbroken for her.

“She left. Her parents pulled her from the school and forbade her ever having contact with me again. All well and good for her, of course — she didn’t have to face consequences from me for what she’d done, and I had to stay behind, with every last girl in the place knowing what kind of pervert I was.” Her lips twist around the word. “I don’t think one of them spoke to me from then until our final year unless they had to.”

“What did _you_ do, then? They didn’t expel you?”

Caro shakes her head. “I was top of the class by far,” she says. “They couldn’t throw me out, or their reputation would have suffered. And I was a scholarship pupil, and my parents’ shop was doing poorly; I had nowhere else to go, and they knew it. So out of the Christian goodness of their hearts, they let me stay on —  _if_ I'd join the convent once I’d finished school. Never mind that I had no vocation, and that they knew it as well as I.”

She looks up; she has been staring at the table-top, tracing circles in the ring of wet left behind by her saucer-less teacup. “In the end, though, it turned out to be less a punishment than an…opportunity,” she admits. “I don’t know how else I could have received nursing training; my parents could never have afforded it. And as it became clear that _that_ was where my calling lay, not with the church, the Mother Superior allowed me to leave the convent and take up a position at a training-hospital in Sheffield. I never went back.”

“I’m so proud of you,” Rey says, laying her hand overtop Caro’s on the table. “Your resilience is incredible. And what you’ve done here, how smoothly the place is running — why, you’d do just fine on the front lines, _Captain_ Pfeiffer,” she laughs. “But you’d be a wonderful doctor, too. I mean it.”

“The front lines are where I’d rather be,” Caroline says wryly, and Rey nods her agreement. “But we make do where we can, don’t we? Such is our lot.”

“When women have the vote, it’ll be different,” Rey predicts with confidence. “But really, Caro, about medical school — is there any way for you to go? Or at least to try?”

“I had a mentor at our hospital in London — Dr Victoria Kalonia. A proper doctor, with a degree, and an _MD_ after her name. Before the war broke out, she had been helping me to apply.” Caro smiles, regretfully. “No use continuing with that until it’s over.”

“Oh, but why don’t you?” Rey protests. “Surely they could accept you now and hold a place for you until later. I don’t think you’d suddenly become _un_ suitable, no matter how long this infernal war drags on.”

But Caroline shakes her head, swirling the tea-leaves in her mug. “They’re reluctant enough to accept female candidates as it is; I can’t go around asking for special dispensations. For the time being, though, I should count myself lucky that I’m working in my field at all, and not stuck at home knitting comforts for the troops. I had my post in London, and now I have this one here, with you.” She glances, teasing, at Rey. “It’s not so terrible after all.”

“Gosh, I’d love to be a doctor, too. Imagine,” Rey says, her eyes lighting up. “After the war, Caro: you and me, at school together. We’ll get a flat in London to share, and sit in lectures together — be partners in the lab — oh, it’ll be lovely, won’t it? We’ll be truly modern women,” she pronounces with delight.

“A flat in London together? And what of your fiancé?” Caro reminds her gently.

Rey sighs, deflating, but quickly perks up again. “Right. Yes. Well — then we’ll _all_ move to London, and be neighbours, and you and I’ll go to school while Poe flies his plane and Finn writes his books, and we’ll all be jolly happy. Yes. That’s how it’s going to be.”

Caro laughs and pats her young friend’s hand. Rey has succeeded in getting her mind off her father, even for a little while. “Do tell Mr Asquith. Perhaps it’ll persuade him to wrap this business up on the double.”

Jessica Pava appears in the doorway, poking her head around. “Matron Pfeiffer?” Rey and Caro both look round. “You’re needed in ward two,” Jess tells Caroline nervously. “So sorry, ma’am.”

Caroline sighs. She pushes her chair back and stands, wiping her hands on her apron. “Back to work, then,” she says. Rey has stood, too, and looks ready to follow her back out to work, but Caro shakes her head. “Stay,” she bids her. “Finish your tea. You’ve had a long day already.”

“Thank you, Caro. Ma’am,” Rey corrects herself hurriedly, for Jess’s benefit. She sits back down, unable to hold in a sigh of relief to be off her aching feet for even a few moments longer.

“Goodnight, Nurse Skywalker,” Caro tells her, following Jess out the door. “I’ll see you in the morning. Thank you for the chat.” She smiles, and is gone.

Rey sips pensively at the rest of her tea. She knows her dreams are just that, dreams, and far-fetched ones at that — at least as long as the war’s on. But she can’t give up the hope that perhaps, once it’s all finished —  _and it’ll be soon, it must be soon —_ she might have a future like the one she’s described. She could get her medical training, and become a proper nurse like Caro, or even a doctor, like her Dr Kalonia. Poe wouldn’t object, Rey is sure of it, and nor would her father or Finn. She smiles into the dregs of her mug, her heart picking up in anticipation.

 _After the war,_ Rey thinks, glancing at the clock and getting up again, putting her cup in the sink and preparing herself for another long, dreary night shift. _After the war, we’ll have everything we’ve dreamed of._

 

* * *

 

The hospitals are overflowing. Leia consults with her brother, the Red Cross, and Caroline, and it is agreed that Millennium House will also begin to accept the less-serious cases who are taking beds from damaged and dying men. Everyone’s workload increases, but Rey, especially, rises to the challenge; in no time at all she can stitch a wound or stop its bleeding quicker than anyone on the wards, Caroline excepted.

Their conversation about medical school is never far from Rey’s mind — she mentions it, offhand, to her father and aunt one night, and is pleasantly surprised by their reactions.

“You must take the chance,” Leia encourages her. “Whether now or when the war is over, apply. I refuse to be the only woman in this family with a university education.” She winks, warmly, at her niece.

“Papa?” Rey turns to Luke, smiling, bolstered by Leia’s enthusiasm.

Luke is smiling, too. “If that’s what you want, my girl, then you’ll pursue it, and I have no doubt you’ll succeed. Now if only they’d tie up all this business so we can get you into a lecture hall, hm?”

(Rey hugs them both so tightly that Luke suggests she learn artificial respiration early.)

By now, it has been nearly eight weeks since the house was converted and Caroline came to them — but already, she is leaving. Her hospital in London needs her back.

“You can’t go,” Rey protests, in the kitchen late at night after Caro has broken the news, the telegram in her hand. “We can’t manage without you!”

“Yes, you can,” Caro tells her. “And I do mean _you,_ Rey. You’re doing splendid work — you’ve taken to nursing so well. And that’s why I’m leaving you in charge when I go.”

“What?” Rey’s mouth drops open.

Caroline nods. “It’s your home; it seems only right. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t trust you,” she adds, when Rey looks unconvinced. “They need me in London more than you do here. I promise you, you can handle it.”

“Handle what?” A couple of other girls enter the kitchen to snatch a cup of tea while they can: Hattie and Meg, two other village girls who took the Red Cross course with Rey.

“I’ve been called back to London,” Caro tells them calmly. “Nurse Skywalker will take over as head nurse.”

“Congratulations, Rey!” enthuses Meg, coming over to hug Rey tightly. The curly-haired brunette is a year or so younger than Rey, and idolises her quite completely. “You’re going to do a wonderful job, I just know it.”

“Thanks, Meg,” Rey replies, and then quickly corrects herself — “Nurse Melville,” she says, glancing at Caro with a sly grin.

Meg laughs and accepts the cup of tea Hattie has poured for her, sitting down with a sigh at the kitchen table. For the next while, the four women chat, glad to be off their feet even for a little while. They share the war news, or at least that which pertains to them personally: Meg’s older brother was sent out in the first wave with the BEF like Brendon Huxley, and lightly wounded at Mons; he has been on Home Service for the past few weeks and will be returning to the front very soon.

“He’s so excited, even though we all hate to see him go,” says Meg, her brow wrinkling. “You’d think it’s one big cricket match, the way they talk about it.”

“Joseph leaves for training on Monday,” Hattie chimes in, sighing. Joseph is her beau of three years, now fiancé of one week, since he got his orders. “And then it’s _months_ before I see him again. I don’t know how you’ve done it, Rey, with Poe gone, and then his leave cancelled. What a shame!”

Rey nods, her mouth tugging down. “I know. I was so looking forward to having even a few days with him and Finn. I miss them terribly.”

“You’re marrying Poe in February, aren’t you?” Hattie asks. “That’s not so far away.”

“That’s the plan.” Rey swallows, remembering James Corcoran and the fears his death had re-awoken in her.

“You’re so lucky. Poe Dameron is so handsome,” Meg pipes up, her eyes twinkling. “Does he have a younger brother?”

Rey laughs, shaking her head. “Sorry, Meg. Perhaps a cousin will come up for the wedding.”

“Does that mean I’m invited?” The grin on Meg’s face could be used as a searchlight.

“What about you, Matron?” Hattie asks Caroline, who has been silent through all this. “Do you have anyone at the front?”

Caroline looks up from her tea. “Oh — no. I’m an only child, and my father is too old.”

“No beau?” Rey sees Hattie’s eyes dart to Caroline’s bare ring finger, and when she shakes her head, the younger woman makes a sympathetic sound. “Perhaps it’s for the best, though, really,” Hattie muses. “Right now, I mean.”

“Perhaps it is.” Caroline’s calm smile deflects further questions.

Rey looks at Caroline, noticing. She had often wondered why such a striking, accomplished woman as Caroline is unmarried and unattached, but after the other night’s conversation, she understands so much more. She wonders if there is perhaps someone in London, and hopes that, indeed, there is.

Soon enough, Meg finishes her tea, and sighs:

“Well, I’d best get back out there. The men’s pillows won’t fluff themselves.”

“I should go, too.” Hattie rises and joins her, and, bidding Rey and Caro — who are not on night-shift — a pleasant evening, they return to the wards, chatting quietly.

“I’m sorry to abandon you too, Rey, but I think I should go pack my things. I’m to leave town early in the morning.” Caro collects her empty cup and Rey’s own, taking them to the sink to wash up. Rey hurries to her side to dry.

“I’m going to miss you,” Rey tells her friend. “Very much. I think I’ll be able to manage — it’ll be scary at first, of course, but I shall make it through. But it just won’t be the same without you in charge, Captain,” she teases, elbowing Caro and making her smile.

“You’ll be just fine. I’ll try and come visit if they ever give me any time to myself,” Caro replies, her dry smile indicating just how likely that is. “And I’ll write as often as I can. We won’t lose touch.”

“Of course we won’t. We’re going to be lab partners after all this is over.”

Rey winks, a skill Poe and Finn endeavoured jointly to teach her and which she now employs with great pride as often as she can, and Caro laughs: “I’ll hold you to that.”

Rey hangs up the drying-towel as Caro replaces the mugs in the cupboard, and then surprises her by going to her and hugging her, her chin hardly meeting Caro’s shoulder. “Do you need any help packing?” Rey asks, her voice muffled.

Caro hugs back, smiling over Rey’s shoulder. “I’m all right. Go get some rest while you can.”

“I’ll see you off in the morning,” Rey promises as they break apart.

“No, don’t. Sleep — you’re going to need it.” And Caro winks, too.

“All right, all right.” Rey holds up her hands in protest, but she looks relieved; they are all perpetually sleep-deprived, a condition that Rey imagines is even worse in a real hospital like the one to which Caro is returning. “Goodnight, Caro, and good luck. Safe travels tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Rey. Goodnight.”

She leaves the kitchen, the heavy skirts of her habit swishing behind her. Alone, Rey yawns, and goes down to the library to say goodnight to her aunt, but finds Leia already dozing by the fire, her spectacles hung round her neck. The household accounts and patients’ roster are all spread out in front of her, along with a half-eaten sandwich and a cold mug of tea. Rey smiles, kisses Leia’s forehead gently, and drops the dishes off in the kitchen before going gratefully up to bed.

In her room, she undresses, relieved to be out of the thick dress and dirty pinafore and too-tight stays. She rubs the marks they’ve left in her skin and with great pleasure pulls on a loose, soft flannel nightgown. After a moment’s hesitation, she leaves the buttons unfastened, and climbs into bed.

Rey snuffs out her candle, snuggles happily into the many layers of covers — the nights are cold, now — and exhales a sigh. She stretches, feeling the ever-present ache in her back, brought on by hours and days of bending over beds with a smile on her face. She points her toes, flexes her fingers, feels her body loosening up; and then brings a languid hand beneath her nightgown, to cup one warm bare breast.

She strokes it contentedly, encircling the nipple with two fingers, rolling it to gentle stiffness. Her other hand goes to her other breast to do the same. Her skin is soft, tender, left untouched for too long: she is too tired, most nights, to do anything but collapse into bed and sleep like the dead until awoken by the shrill alarm-clock before dawn. Tonight, though, she will indulge.

Lifting her nightgown out of the way, Rey bends her knees to put the soles of her feet together, welcoming the slight stretch in her hips. Legs spread, she drops one hand from her breast to her mound, and strokes down the seam of her folds to her slit, just beginning to grow damp. She remembers with a pleasant shiver how Poe’s tongue has slipped nimbly inside her on the nights they have been together, and feels herself growing wetter at the thought.

She slides one finger inside herself and crooks it, humming with pleasure as it presses the sensitive spot of spongy tissue there. She imagines it is Finn inside her, as he was the night before he left, and cannot stop the little moan that leaves her lips. With the other hand still roaming between her breasts, feeling the thump of her heartbeat beneath the thin skin of her chest, she alternates the attentions of her fingers between the pearl of nerves nestled between her folds and that deepest place inside herself.

Her breathing quickens, her eyes close; her body lifts itself from the mattress as if to meet an invisible lover, or two. She pictures both of them, her boys, giving pleasure and receiving — her hands on Finn, Finn’s hands on Poe, Poe’s hands on her — all three of them in this bed, a riot of limbs and breaths and love. She misses them, oh how she misses them, but for the moment they are here, with her, bringing her to the edge and then over —

Rey exhales an _Oh_ as she comes, her body tensing and then relaxing, dreamily, sinking back into the bed. She presses a hand to the racing pulse within her breast. She stretches, again, and smiles; and then pulls down her nightgown, buttons it up. She rolls over onto one side, curled-up as if being held.

“Goodnight, my loves,” she says aloud, and falls asleep not quite alone.

 

* * *

 

_21 November 1914_

_Dear Rey,_

_Thank you for the birthday gift: it came just in time, my scout brought it up this morning. My drawing pencils are in quite a state so it’ll be good to have new ones. How are things at home? Congratulations on your promotion, if you can call it that, but I’m sorry to hear that Caroline has gone; it sounds like you were close. London isn’t so far._

_Are Finn and Poe doing all right? Have you been hearing from them? I haven’t heard from Hux in… a while. His plans to come see me for my birthday fell through sometime last month. I try not to worry, but, well. When I do hear from him, his letters are shorter than they used to be. He doesn’t say much of anything, which is why I worry: he of all people wouldn’t hold back the details, especially not from me._

_Now that I’m nineteen I have even less excuse to be here. No one knows it’s my birthday but it feels like they do. The stares are worse now, somehow._

_I’m sorry I have nothing better to say. I don’t like school; I’m not failing my course, at least not yet, but I’m still not happy here. I feel useless. But please tell my mother I’m well._

_See you at Christmas._

_Ben_

Ben doesn’t reread the letter, knowing that if he does, he’ll tear it up. Instead he folds it, shoves it into an envelope, and sets it aside for the scout to collect. He knows that another attempt will prove just as fruitless as this one; he can’t find anything to say.

“A while” translates to weeks. He knows Hux has been in the line, in battle — last he heard, near _Bp.,_ which he has deduced to mean Bapaume. Ben has taken up the girlish habit of marking his progress on a map of France. The last red tack has not moved for far too long. Where is he? When he wakes every morning Ben’s first thought is that he does not know if Hux has done the same.

_21 November 1914_

_Hux,_

_It’s my birthday. I’m nineteen today. I thought I’d hear from you — it’s silly, it’s selfish, I’m being a fool. You have more important things to worry about. I’m old enough now to be out there with you and they still won’t let me go. Would you even want me there if they did?_

_As it gets colder the summer feels less real. I want you to tell me that it happened, that you meant it; all of it, any of it. When will I see you?_

_I love you. I love you to a degree I can’t understand. I don’t know who I am without you. I don’t know who I ever was before you, and if I lose you, I won’t be anyone at all. Come home, come home, come home to me, and make me myself again._

_Your Ben._

This one he does tear up, and throws the scraps on the fire.

 

* * *

 

_26 November 1914  
Ar., France_

_Dear Ben,_

_Finally, finally we’re out of the line (and in the home of that famous mademoiselle — but no matter what the song says, the officers haven’t got steak, or anything that doesn’t come out of a tin.) I don’t remember the last time my feet or my clothes or any inch of my skin was dry: it’s freezing and wet, absolutely miserable. The days all blur together with the fighting and the cold. And that’s why I hope you’ll forgive me, because I’m seeing now what day it is and I am dreadfully sorry. Happy birthday, Ben. You know I wish I could have been with you for it; it was awful of me not even to write until now._

_I was hoping to have gotten leave this week, as you know, and I thought that I myself would be enough of a present (cocky, isn’t he?), but leave is harder to come by than dry socks out here, and as we hadn’t seen a town for weeks until last night I haven’t bought you anything, either. Mea culpa, mea culpa. But one of the Tommies has got a Brownie camera; perfectly non-regulation, of course, they could punish him badly if they found out, but we’ve all had such fun with it that no-one has the heart to report him. And so — in lieu of me, myself, please accept this unfortunate and entirely candid photograph — when I say “we” have been having fun with it I do mean the other men… I can’t stand to look at my own face any longer, so please, take it._

_I hope to have leave by Christmas, but then, so do all the others. I’m so sorry to get your hopes up again._

_Yours, even from afar._

_Hux_

With the letter Hux has enclosed a snapshot. In it, he is sitting on a makeshift bench in a trench, holding a mug in both bare hands and looking off to the side, not at the camera. His uniform and boots are plainly filthy, but the cap atop his hair is perfectly perched, the regimental badge seeming to gleam even in grainy black-and-white. His brow is furrowed: perhaps he’s watching the firing from the other side, or observing some of his men as they retaliate. At work even when at rest.

Ben stares at the photograph and feels his throat growing tight. The face, the hair, the features are the same, but this looks less like Hux and more a soldier, any Nigel in the officer class. Ben almost doesn’t know him. He strokes his face with his thumb but it feels less like a caress and more like erasure.

He reads the letter again and then puts it away without replying. Let Hux feel the pain of silence for days, weeks, more; let Hux worry about _him,_ for once, the way Ben has not ceased to worry about Hux since that awful day in August when war was declared... He tacks the photograph next to the map and then takes it down again. No-one is ever in his rooms except Wharton, but all the same: _Who is he? A friend._ He knows he could not say that without the lie showing on his face.

But in the end his resolve breaks. He puts the photo back up. He writes Hux before supper, a lengthy, grateful, piteous missive, begging him to stay safe and to come home. He says as much as he can and not half as much as he wants; he tries to tell him he loves him without ever saying the words. He posts it, and moves the red tack to Armentières, and brings himself off that night with his fist in his mouth and tears on his face, the photograph looking down on his sorrow and shame.

 

* * *

 

The end of November — Finn and Poe’s training would not even have finished and here they are, in the line like old veterans. Day in, day out in the trenches, the dull muck and monotony of it all; all the colour seems to have been leached from the world, but for the too-bright red of blood. Already the platoon has lost men: men who should have been guaranteed at least three more weeks of life. _Life’s not fair, and neither is war._

The front. They must act, here, as if Finn is Poe’s servant, for that is why they have been allowed to stay together at all. Poe hates it, Finn can tell, even more than Finn himself: he must conceal his frown every time Finn calls him _sir_ in public, when he brings him his breakfast or cleans his boots first, ahead of his own. Finn beseeches him, silently, not to look so displeased, and Poe, grimly, will smile: “Thank you, Finn,” he says with difficulty.

“Of course, sir.”

All the men long to be back in billets, but perhaps none so deeply as these two (or, Finn thinks, maybe they do. He is not so naïve as to think they are the only ones _like this;_ but no-one, of course, would dare speak up if they were). And finally their wishes are granted: out of reserve and behind the lines. They have been granted mere days in which to re-learn to be human, before they become machines again — or cattle; the same.

A farmhouse near Arras. Poe as an officer gets his own room, and Finn, as his man, bunks there too. Here the nights need not be cold for them to share a bed.

The men are in good spirits: first night off the line, four days til they go back: ample rum rations, a wine cellar left plentiful when the farm’s owners fled. An evening around the big table in the kitchen, dinner by candlelight; Lt. Beaulieu is half-French and cooks splendidly even with what little they have. They sit around the table, officers and other ranks mingling for once, until late in the night, smoking and drinking and laughing, relieved to still be alive another day. Every breath they take is a requiem for their fallen.

It is past two when the first man pushes back his chair and announces that he’s for bed. In the next quarter-hour three more men surrender, and then two more, and then four; Poe and Finn exchange a glance, and then Poe sets down his empty glass and declares, “I’m tucking in, too, lads! Enjoy yourselves.” He winks at the men, rises from the table, claps their backs as he goes; and Finn — habitual shadow, unremarked — follows.

Upstairs they are quiet, careful, stepping over creaking floorboards, shutting the door and locking it softly. They strip quickly — out of stiff dirty uniforms for the first time in days, sighing in relief when the chill night air hits their drink-warmed skin — and are in each other’s arms at once. Poe kisses Finn deeply, gratefully, leading him back toward the bed. The straw mattress rustles under their weight, sending up a sweet stale scent.

They take their time: they can afford to. From downstairs still comes muffled laughter; from the other rooms come drunken snores. Poe tastes like good wine and Woodbines, like sweat and autumn when Finn kisses him. Poe takes him in his mouth and Finn shakes all over with pleasure; he comes sweetly, gasping, silent, his hand fisting in Poe’s curls; when he has finished he strokes Poe to his climax and thrills in the whisper of his name.

They clean themselves up and climb back into bed, into each other’s arms. Three more nights like this, and then alone again.

“Finn,” Poe says softly, as they are both drifting off.

Finn’s eyes open. “Yes?”

Poe’s gaze finds his in the dark. “We’ve been lucky so far. Too lucky.”

Finn understands exactly what he means. Their part of the line, they have been told, is quiet, even sleepy; after Nonne Bosschen they have not seen combat. Their billets are extraordinarily comfortable and clean. This cannot last. “I feel that, too.”

“Do you ever think…?” Poe shifts, props himself on one elbow. Finn can see his frown in the shadows on his face. “Should I have married Rey?” he asks bluntly. “Was I deluding myself when I said we’d be all right to wait? We’re certainly not going to be home by Christmas.”

Finn has dreaded this question. He and Leia had discussed it, quietly, at home once or twice before they left; they both thought it would be safer to get married straightaway, but knew that Poe, having made up his mind to do otherwise, wouldn’t be persuaded. Finally, he speaks honestly:

“It would have been better not to wait.”

Poe does not look offended, only crushed to have been right. He sighs. “I regret it, now. If I’d known then what this was going to be like —” His gesture encompasses the endless days of waiting in the trenches for action that never comes; the paltry few yards of ground that either side has gained since the end of the summer. The feeling that weighs on all of them, that this could go on forever.

“But you didn’t,” Finn points out. “No-one did, and no-one could have. Don’t blame yourself.”

“If only I hadn’t been so stubborn.”

Finn tightens his grip around him, strokes his arm. “It’s all right. Nothing has happened; there’s still time. What about the next time we go home?”

“When will that be?” Poe’s face is pained. “And besides — God, I hate that I do, but I want to hold off, still. What if there’s a chance I could fly?” He turns from Finn, ashamed.

“I understand,” Finn tells him. He kisses the side of his face. “But think on it. For Rey’s sake.”

“For Rey’s sake,” Poe agrees. He twists in Finn’s arms to kiss his lips again. “We had best sleep. Enjoy the real bed while we can.” He pulls Finn closer still. “And this.”

“And this. One day it’ll be different,” Finn promises.

“One day.”

Their pact, their mantra. _One day._

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few historical notes: yes, I did mean "nun's copse" and not "nun's corpse." The song Hux references is [Mademoiselle from Armentières](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKzhQ4j9HD4). Once again, The Absolutist, as well as the [letters of Phillip Hewetson](http://www.norfolkrecordsociety.org.uk/publications/lxxviii/), were particularly useful for this chapter.
> 
> I'm on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com)!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for minor character injury, minor character death, fairly graphic war descriptions, brief, period-typically racist comments, battle violence, and **major character injury.** Read carefully!

* * *

 

Hux’s battalion is still at Armentières and winter has set in. At first, frostbitten men were sent out of the line in droves, until they no longer had enough whole ones to fight. Now, if anything but your trigger finger is damaged, you stay, and you freeze slowly with the rest of them. The trenches are filled with icy water, ankle-deep and higher. Hux must concur with Dante: there is no fire in hell after all.

Days and days of combat. Their reserves are growing sparse: reinforcements can’t arrive soon enough, held up by the weather and the fighting all down the line, and so those of them in the front line stay there for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Hundreds are wounded; hundreds die. Someone tells Hux that in the first three weeks of the war, one million men were killed. Hux does not believe him. No-one will be able to go on if they believe him. How many weeks has it been now?

Hux’s servant, Mitaka, takes a bullet to the right wrist. It shatters. Hux had never realised how young he was until he sees the bearers bring him in, screaming and sobbing, clutching the mess of his arm and calling for his mother. He does not stop crying even once the blood has been mopped up, the wound bandaged, and morphine administered; now he starts shaking, too, uncontrollably and constantly. There is something else wrong. _Neurasthenia,_ the doctors say, but the men all call it _shell-shock._ It is a dirty word. It is the highest shame. They will kill you for it.

Hux intervenes. Dorian is not well, he has always been fragile — he is not a coward, he is not a traitor; he is to be pitied, he should never have been fighting at all. Hux mentions his father’s name and as luck would have it the man in charge knew him in the Boer. A good man, Brendon Huxley, and now his son too. Your servant is a lucky man. Back to England with him and home service for the duration. Poor bugger. Lucky to have you looking out for him, Captain Huxley, my lad.

Mitaka is sent far far behind the lines to hospital. From there he will go home, back to Huxley Hall: his war ends now. He presses Hux’s hand with his good one, clammy and shaking, _thank you,_ and there are tears in his eyes when he leaves him, tears of joy; he has been saved. _How many miracles make a saint?_   Hux wonders. None of the other men say goodbye; they only watch with forbidden bitterness on their stony faces. Hux tells himself he does not envy him. They all do.

A week passes. Mitaka is forgotten just as if he had died, except that the men do not resent their dead for dying. A new young man joins Hux’s battalion. His name is Thomas Quinn; he is nineteen years old; he is a Charterhouse man like Hux. This is not where their similarities end.

As Quinn settles in to life with the men, Hux can feel him watching him. Wherever he goes in the warren of trenches, there Thomas Quinn will turn up: not speaking to him, no, nor even looking at him, often, but he will be there. When Hux cleans his rifle in the evening (something he has always done himself, even when he still had a servant), then Thomas Quinn, playing at cards with his comrades, will raise his voice slightly and make bawdy jokes that he is certain Hux will hear, in that cool, ironic tone of his. When the others throw back their heads and laugh, Quinn’s gaze, behind round wire-rimmed spectacles, fixes on Hux, as if to ask why doesn’t he as well. Hux does not look up from his work.

Hux is certain that this will not end well. He avoids the boy as much as he can; he delegates responsibility to others and sees Quinn’s cold looks when he does. He speaks more harshly to him, perhaps, than to any of the other men, who have come to trust him and perhaps even like him by now. He does everything he can to radiate disinterest — but all the same he cannot tell if he is lying to himself.

One night things come to a head, as Hux had known they would. Quinn’s usual card-playing mates are on a digging-party tonight; Quinn has somehow or other got himself excused. Hux is returning from a sentry-duty shift, and meets a runner in the corridor, who hands him a stack of papers from HQ. “Thank you, Private,” he says, distracted. It is dark, he cannot see the man’s face.

“Lieutenant,” corrects the runner, and it is Quinn. Hux looks up: he can see the glint of his glasses, his wolfish smile in the dark.

Without a word Hux turns from him. He stalks down the corridor (dubbed Piccadilly Circus by the men) and descends the worn, frozen dirt stairs into the officers’ dugout. He hears Quinn following him, and once he is on flat ground, Hux rounds on him.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be, _Lieutenant?”_   The other shoe is, finally, to drop.

The younger man gives a cocky smile, pushing his light-brown curls out of his eyes. He’s taken off his cap: Hux ought to reprimand him for it, but guesses that in time the biting wind will correct the violation for him.

“I only thought you might need help, sir,” Thomas Quinn answers him, his voice, crisply-accented as Hux’s own, taking on the barest mocking lilt. There is a tempered braggadocio about him, intensified here by their being alone.

“With what, exactly?” Hux replies icily. He goes to the desk and begins sorting through the papers, his back turned on Quinn. He won’t let the younger man see the flush that has crept to his cheeks, nor how his hand trembles. _From the cold._

There is noise behind him, the sound of boots crunching across packed muddy snow. Quinn comes closer. “Now that your servant’s gone, I thought I might help to ease your cares,” the boy says softly. He’s close, far too close, and Hux freezes, his hands immediately stilling. “Offer you some comfort. Be your gentleman’s gentleman, if you like.”

Unthinking, Hux turns his head, just slightly, to glance at his bunk. By the time he realises and moves his head back, Thomas has already noticed, and gives a laugh under his breath. Hux does not move. They could be court-martialled for this, and they both know it; but still, for a wild unbidden moment, he allows himself to imagine giving in — taking Quinn to bed, a quick fumbling of trouser-buttons and a chilly hand growing warm on his cock; or perhaps even filthier things, bending the young man over and burying himself in him, drawing grunts and cries from him as he spent himself inside…

 _Ben,_ he thinks, _Ben. Ben._

“What do you say…sir?”

The pause before his title is calculated, infuriating: Hux dares not think _flirtatious:_ and all at once he has had enough. _He goes too far. This cannot continue._

He turns round, the papers held to his chest like a shield, and glares at Quinn: “No,” he hisses. _“No,_ Lieutenant. I do not require your services —  _any_ of them that you might think to offer. If I have ever given you any indication to the contrary, then rest assured that it was unintentional, and will not be repeated. You are not to proposition me again. Is that clear, Lieutenant Quinn?”

The young man’s face falls. Hux’s gut is momentarily clenched cold, seeing the look of surprise and dejection in his clear blue eyes: but the feeling fades as Quinn’s disappointment is replaced with an insolent smirk. “Yes, _sir,”_ he says, lifting his chin like a child, hardening his mouth. “I understand.”

“Good,” Hux says with perfect coldness. “Now go, Lieutenant. I have work to do.”

“Yes, sir.” To Hux’s detached surprise he actually goes, and does not look back when he does.

Hux sits down with his reports and stares at them for upwards of five minutes before realising that he has not absorbed a word. His vision will not focus. He was wrong.

He stands, pushes back his chair, leaves the dugout. He will apologise — he was too harsh — what if he misjudged the situation, what if Quinn truly only meant to offer himself as a new servant, to clean his gun and polish his boots for him, what if Hux has projected his own perversions, his own sins onto the boy —

“Sir?” A private in the corridor, his face concerned; Hux has nearly knocked him over.

“Quinn,” Hux says. “Where is he?”

The private points — “He just passed me, going that way” — Hux thanks him; he turns down the corridor to the main trench and then he hears the shot.

Shouts from the front of the trench, “Sniper! Take cover!”, and a sharp wail that sputters into silence. Hux knows.

He is too late; a shot to the head will do that. The boy had been playing a stupid game with his friend, smoking a cigarette over the top of the parapet, defying the first rule that every man learns on his first day at the front; and Hux knows it was a slight aimed at him, for what he’d said and done. Thomas Quinn has a bullet in his brain and his knowing eyes are unseeing behind his glasses. The blood-spattered lenses are perfectly whole.

Hux becomes aware that there are other men around him. He becomes aware that return shots are being fired from their side, and that one of them must hit its mark, because a cheer rises up from the fire-step. Someone hushes it, harshly, and Hux becomes aware that he is holding a dead body in his lap.

“Sir. Captain Huxley. Captain, sir.”

Hux looks up blindly. A bearer team stands by with a stretcher. Who has called them?

“No,” he says. “No.”

He stands up. Thomas Quinn’s body slides to the cold ground. Hux bends at the waist and lifts the boy into his arms. He staggers under his dead weight; the bearers step closer, quickly, ready to take him, but again Hux says, “No.” His voice is a savage thing.

“Sir. Sir, please, let us take him.” The lead bearer speaks in the same voice he uses when a man has lost an arm or an eye or is bleeding from a stomach wound, his guts cradled in his hands. He speaks in the voice he uses when a man has gone mad. “We’ll bury him with the others. Sir, please.”

“I’ll take him. Leave me.” The boy is so heavy in his arms. The bearers don’t move: the other men watch the scene, frozen. “Leave me!”

“Come on, lads.”

With a glance over his shoulder at Hux, the lead bearer takes his team and the stretcher back to the aid post. The other men look away, too, and go to Quinn’s friend, who has slumped to the ground and is sitting with his back against the muddy wall of the dugout, staring straight ahead and crying in silence. A cigarette smoulders between his fingers, getting dangerously close to the skin. Hux doesn’t see if someone takes it from him, for he is already on his way to the burial ground.

Chloride of lime and the snow on the ground do little to mask the stench of a hundred dead and rotting men. Beneath the layer of snow, the mud is churned-up with shovel marks, barely covering the bodies; some have been inadvertently hacked to pieces by men who came to bury their friends, so shallow are these makeshift graves. Hux deposits Quinn’s body on a cleaner patch of snow and strips it clean, laying the uniform pieces aside with mechanical precision. The contents of his pockets: cigarettes, a matchbook, a few coins, the little soldiers’ Bible. Nothing else, no picture of a sweetheart. His identity tags are so new that the aluminium still shines.

Hux stares at the meagre pile in strange bewilderment and then picks up the shovel and begins to dig.

The mud is thick and rancid-smelling, like no other mud at all. It is heavy, sticky, making every shovelful weigh triple what it should, and require thrice the effort besides; soon Hux’s muscles scream, his bare hands sticking to the cold metal of the handle, the skin pulling away. Every shovelful unearths some grotesquerie: a head with half the face missing; a single severed leg; the small horrible body of a child, a fleeing villager killed and buried here like the soldier he might have grown up to be. Hux keeps digging.

With bloody hands he buries the boy. In death, Thomas Quinn’s smirking face is frozen in a rictus of shock, of fear. The blood on his forehead is already beginning to freeze. When he stripped him Hux missed the spectacles; he folds them, places them in his own pocket. The family might want them. Sometimes they do. 

The body is covered in mud, more thoroughly than many of the others. Hux has never done a job halfway. Soon the snow will blanket it. Hux walks back to the trench with Quinn’s things in his arms and lights a cigarette with one of the boy’s matches: his own are damp through.

The next morning after stand-to, Hux is called to HQ for a meeting. His own mentor, Maj-Gen. Snow, sits him down, serves him tea, looks gravely at him:

“I hear you lost a man last night. The other men say you took it badly. I see here that you had the chance for leave this month, but you haven’t taken it. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any reason for that?”

Last night Quinn joined the German boy in Hux’s dreams. He fucked them both, killed them both. _I owe them this. An atonement._ “No, sir.”

“Well, Huxley, I suggest you take it now.” Snow surveys him over the rims of his pince-nez, his pale eyes unreadable. “You’ve obviously been under some strain. Go home. Rest.”

“No, sir.”

“Excuse me?” Snow’s voice is harsh: Hux has never disobeyed him before.

“I don’t want to take leave, sir. I don’t need to. The men need me here.” Hux speaks levelly, aware he risks punishment for insubordination. 

“Captain Huxley, if you don’t go home now, your name will be returned to the bottom of the list. It could be months before you see England again. How would your father feel about that?”

“He doesn’t care.” _Ben does. Ben will._ “I won’t go, sir. I respectfully decline.”

After a long moment, Snow stands, gripping his cane with one gnarled hand. “I am impressed with your fortitude,” he says gruffly. “Very well. Stay. But keep your wits about you.”

 _You’re stronger than them,_ he means _. Prove it._

Hux rises, puts his cap back on, salutes numbly. “I will. Thank you, sir.” He is dismissed.

Soon Ben will be home at Millennium House for Christmas. Hux remembers: in October he had promised to be with him by them. Instead, he can only offer a letter.

He is sick of writing lies, but his pen refuses to speak the truth anymore.

_Dear Ben,_

_We lost a man last night. A boy, really: he was nineteen, same as you. He went to my school. Prefect and captain of the colour guard, according to his file. He was picked off by a sniper because he smoked a cigarette over the top of the trench. They can see the cherry all the way across No-Man’s Land. One shot to the head. I buried him myself. His blood is still on my uniform; no telling if it will come off._

_I was supposed to have leave later this month, but they cancelled it this morning; I’m so sorry. Next month, maybe. I’ll do what I can._

_Hux._

 

* * *

 

Miles down the line, to the south, is Poe and Finn’s battalion. They have moved to the village of Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée, and been behind the lines there for two days; but then word comes in that the Indian Corps, fighting at Festubert, need assistance.

“Of course they do,” sneer many of the men. “Bloody savages can’t defend themselves, much less win a white man’s war.” Finn does not miss the looks shot at him with these words. He keeps his chin high when he turns away and hopes only that Poe has not heard.

Thus to Festubert, the whole long march in freezing rain. Christmas is next week and this war will go on long past it.

They awake early for the bayonet charge, ten after three in the morning. Their C.O., Emmett, makes the rounds of the trenches while the stars are still out — everywhere whispers, those awake nudging their sleeping comrades out of dugouts or waking them from where they doze on the hard-frozen ground, _get up, come along, there’s a good lad._

Finn did not, could not sleep all night. He rouses Poe from where he sleeps at his side, wrapped in flea-bags and looking absurdly peaceful, blessed with the kind of rest most of them haven’t known for months, even in billets. Poe smiles lazily at him as he awakes to find Finn bending over him in the half-dark: “Time to kill some Boches, is it?” he murmurs, and hauls himself to standing. Down the trench there is bacon frying.

They all have eaten and lined themselves up before the sun has risen, bayonets strapped to their rifles. The runner leaves as they get into position, taking the C.O.’s watch to be synchronised. In the line next to Poe, Finn swallows hard and hopes not to be sick. Around him he hears murmured prayers; the runner comes flying back with the C.O.’s watch; he straps it on, checks the time, and nods to his men.

They go over the top, silent as a plague.

For a moment all is still — the stars seem to wink in the black velvet sky — and then comes a shout from the other side — in German, Finn doesn’t understand the words, but the sense is clear enough, for all at once from across No-Man’s Land a horde of them materialises, dark shapes charging forward, bayonets out; and their side answers with a shout back, a wordless cry of exhilaration, as they race forward to meet the enemy.

Immediately the fighting is visceral and bloody. It has hardly been two minutes before Finn has seen a private from his own regiment fall to the ground, clutching the bayonet plunged into his stomach, his face frozen in a hellish death-mask; his last scream has hardly faded away before two of his comrades have attacked and killed his assailant.

But Finn does not see this, for he is charging ahead with the rest of them, slashing and hacking with their clumsy deadly blades. He swipes a German across the arm that he raises to strike a killing blow to Finn’s unprotected neck, sending him stumbling, cursing, to the side. For the next several moments, amid the chaos of battle, all Finn can hear is his heartbeat pounding in his ears, knowing how close he had come to certain death.

Ahead of him on the battleground, he sees Poe drive his bayonet into a German’s thigh; sees the look of disgusted determination on the handsome face he loves so well, as he pulls out the dripping blade and the soldier, screaming, falls, his hands clasped to the spurting wound. Something roils in Finn’s stomach. He looks away.

The battle rages on. It has been minutes only, or perhaps hours already. All around him, bodies are cut down: young men torn away from their studies and trades, older men taken from their hearths and homes. Finn wounds two more Germans, one his own age, one older, and hopes, desperately hopes — against what he knows he _should_ hope — that they will be treated quickly, and be sent home on leave, and that perhaps, perhaps they will be wounded _enough_ to be kept back from the trenches, but not any more than that…

As he is hoping this, the younger man stumbles back to his feet, bleeding from the slice in his calf that Finn gave him. He limps, badly — perhaps he severed a tendon, Finn thinks, and feels guilt for this, even as the German raises his bayonet, his blond hair falling in his eyes — he lunges for Finn, who tries to dodge —

He is not quick enough. The weapon finds purchase.

All at once, a searing in his shoulder — the weapon is yanked out, sending a gush of red wetness down his arm — and the _pain,_ a pain that sends Finn to his knees at once, his vision going white. He chokes, gurgles, tries to cry out for help —  _Poe, Poe —_ but the pain overwhelms him, steals his breath. He is on his back in the mud; his assailant has disappeared. The cloud-hazed sun is a blind eye above him. The noise of the battle closes in.

Finn’s eyes drift shut. He sees, he hears no more.

They had been separated after the initial charge, but now Poe, finding a brief storm’s-eye in the fighting, looks around for Finn, wiping his dirtied bayonet on his equally filthy trousers. He sees their regiment struggling, but bravely holding its own: there is Webster, bleeding from a scratch on his cheek but hurt no worse than that, removing his blade from between a German’s ribs; there is slight, dark-haired Branson, engaged in single combat with a strapping, muscled Hun, neatly dodging and deflecting his blows. _But Finn, Finn, where is Finn?_

Almost as soon as he thinks his lover’s name, a cry of terrible pain rises up above the clash of blades and battle-cries, and immediately Poe knows. He whips his head to the source of the sound, and sees, to his horror, a young German wiping his bayonet on his trousers, just as Poe had done. As the rising sun catches him Poe sees a disbelieving smile curve the younger man’s lips — and at his feet is the limp, bleeding body of —

_“Finn!”_

Poe crosses the battlefield like Achilles himself, stepping through and over dead and dying men, deaf to the groans that echo in his wake. He moves in a blind rage, his vision narrowing only to the gloating German boy, who stands, made stupid with pride, above — Poe dares not think Finn’s _corpse._ But the smile drops at once from his face when Poe gets to him, and plunges his bayonet into his chest.

The boy gasps and gags horribly; he might try and call for help but the words are lost in a fountain of blood. He falls to his knees and then face-first into the snowy, bloody mud. Poe shoves his body aside and kneels next to Finn. He does not move, his eyes are closed — a pool of blood spreads around him, darkening his uniform sleeve — Poe does not see him breathing  **—**

“Dameron!” Emmett’s voice, Poe thinks. His C.O. comes jogging over, face filthy, rifle in hand. “Dameron, get up!” he commands, and then at once his tone changes as he comes closer and takes in the scene. “Oh, Christ. Bearers! _Bearers!”_

“Too far away,” Poe rasps out. “I’ll take him.”

“Let me help.” Emmett lays down his rifle, and, kneeling beside Poe, helps him to heave Finn’s body onto his back, supporting Poe as he staggers to standing. “There you go.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Godspeed.” Emmett shoulders his rifle and returns to the fray.

Finn moans. The sound is soft, full of agony — Poe freezes — but then he is quiet again. _Alive. He is alive._ His blood is running into the thick wool of Poe’s tunic, soaking it. _Go. Go quickly._ Carefully, he hefts Finn’s dead weight higher on his back, pulling his arms, his dear hands _,_ over his shoulder and holding them together. Finn gives another low, quiet sound of anguish at the movement. “All right, Finn, all right, my love,” Poe murmurs, and he is afraid. _Please. Not yet._

He sets out. In the distance, like a mirage, he sees the canvas tent emblazoned with that blessed red cross (the absurdity of it crosses his mind for a moment: here they fight, within sight of their medical tent behind the lines.) He picks his way across the battlefield, littered with ever more corpses, for what seems an eternity. The battle still lives, still rages — bullets fly, men scream and die — but he is deaf and blind to everything but the weight of Finn on his back, the rasping rattle of his breathing. “One more step, one more, one more,” Poe murmurs to himself, staggering under his lover’s weight, soaked in sweat and filth and blood. Finn’s hands, in his, are cold.

Finally they reach the tent. “Help,” Poe calls loudly, his mouth parched, his voice hoarse. “Help. We need help.” His legs feel weak: he does not know how much longer he can bear Finn’s weight. _“Help!”_

Orderlies appear from inside the triage tent, wiping filthy hands on filthy aprons. Poe kneels, careful as he can, and two other men spring to lift Finn’s body from his back and carry him into the vehicle. In the foul darkness, inside the canvas walls, severely-wounded men are piled like sardines into rickety bunks, moaning open-mouthed. As Finn is carefully loaded in with them, an orderly scrawling a Field Medical ticket and pinning it to his tunic, Poe pushes his way forward and says, not recognising his own voice, “I’m going too. Take me with you.”

“Sir, we can’t —” begins one of the orderlies, stepping in front of him and blocking his path.

Poe speaks over him, deadly firm. _“I’m going with him._ I can’t leave him. I won’t. Stop wasting time and let me through.”

The man hesitates, looking around for a superior; Poe simply pushes past him and climbs into the ambulance next to Finn, finding space amid the miserable, delirious wounded, stepping in blood and viscera. _“Go,”_ he shouts to the driver. “These men are dying!”

And finally the doors are slammed shut, plunging Poe and the others into darkness. The engine starts up. As the ambulance shakes its slow way down bumpy, treacherous dirt roads to the base hospital, jostling the wounded men even at its careful speed and making them moan all the harder, Poe takes up Finn’s hand and clasps it, closing his eyes to pray.

 

* * *

 

The next days are a hell such as Poe has never known. He stays with his men during the day, fights with them when they need to. As if the gods know that it is no longer himself he lives for, he stays unharmed. In the evenings, once they’ve moved out of the line and into billets again and the men can go into town, Poe sets out not for the pub or the brothel with the rest of them, but goes alone to the hospital to keep private vigil there.

But the hospital, that respite, proves worse than the trenches.

The wound is infected. Finn is half-conscious, sometimes murmuring fragments of words, more often emitting low moans of pain. He is stable, they tell Poe — they have stopped the bleeding, the medication should start to work soon — but still he does not wake fully. His body protects itself. He breathes; his brow furrows in his sleep; sometimes he cries out in dreams; but his dark eyes stay closed, fluttering restlessly beneath their lids.

“When he wakes,” Poe asks, “what then?”

The sister on duty has pity in her eyes when she shrugs and tells him what little she knows. The dirty bayonet entered deeply; the nerves have been badly damaged. He may never regain use of the arm — or, then again, he may. There is nothing to be done but to wait and see.

At Millennium House, Rey screams when she reads Finn’s name in the casualty lists. She is inconsolable until the telegram arrives, the same day, telling them that he lives; that he is unconscious and wounded, but _alive._ Poe writes that he has secured leave for himself; when Finn wakes, he assures them, and once he has healed enough, they will both come home at once.

Five days after he was wounded, Finn opens his eyes. Christmas Eve.

“Poe. Poe, are you there?”

Jerking awake, a startled inhalation — “Oh. Oh, nurse —  _nurse,_ he’s awake, he’s — come quickly!” Hands fumbling, grasping in the dark. Tears on Poe’s face, streaming freely. _Thank you. Thank you._ “Oh, Finn. Finn, my sweetheart, my love.”

“Where am I? Why are you here?” Finn’s voice is hoarse, woozy. The strike of a match: candlelight. In the dim corona, a hospital bed. Poe in a chair at the bedside, his dark eyes wet and shadowed, a beatific smile on his face. “What happened?”

“You were wounded. At Festubert. But you’re all right, Finn, you’re all right.”

 _Festubert._ A dim, blurry recollection: a blond boy, smiling. The stink of blood and battle. A moment of agony, and his uniform sleeve, soaked and warm. Finn looks down. Bandages. He lifts a hand to prod, gently, at the wound, and then realises, after a moment, that he feels no pain. No touch. He looks at Poe.

“How bad?”

“Oh, Finn. Oh, Finn.”

When finally the nurse comes, Poe has climbed into the too-small bed, careful not to jar Finn's bandaged arm; their hands are clasped, their heads bent together, whether in sleep or murmured conversation. She knows she should, but she cannot bring herself to pull them apart. Such bonds are forged in the worst moments of war; by now she knows better than to try and break them.

In the morning, the doctors examine him awake for the first time. The damage is bad — two nerves nearly severed — but he will keep the arm, the whole of it. The infection has died down startlingly quickly, and after the initial shock and prolonged unconsciousness, his vitals have stabilised much quicker than anyone had expected.

“You have quite the fighting spirit,” the white-haired one tells Finn, who is struggling to keep his eyes open after the morning’s administration of morphine. “A strong will to live.”

“You’ve been blessed,” adds the other, a frowning, severe man. He was a vicar before he was a doctor. “You ought to thank God, son. He saved you.”

Finn lies, politely: “Seems that way, sir.” Poe squeezes his hand.

He will go home. There are not enough beds in this hospital, and more severely-wounded men coming in every day. Poe reminds the doctors that Finn’s home is now a hospital; he will have round-the-clock care and far more comfort than an overcrowded ward will provide. They agree to put him on a ship tomorrow, Christmas Day.

Finn will be honourably discharged from active duty and never see the front line again. If he believed in God he would never cease to thank him; but as it is, he knows who his true saviour is.

“We were right after all,” Poe jokes, supporting his good arm as they walk onto the ship. “Your war’s over. Merry Christmas.”

“Thank you,” Finn tells him, when they are alone, when the nurse has left and changed his dressing, given him another dose of morphine. His eyes are closing; the pain ebbs away with the rocking of the boat; Poe’s hands stroke his face. “For saving me.”

“Thank you for coming back to me.” His kiss, gentle as spring.

“I always will.”

“And I to you.”

Finn slips into morphine sleep. The war has no more need of him; his dreams, at last, find peace.

 

* * *

 

Rey comes running down the drive to meet them, when at last Finn comes home.

Days on the Channel crossing — earlier this month, a German submarine raid at Dover, so many more precautions now — and then a long hospital-train ride home, whereon Finn slept deeply between dressing-changes and doses of medication, and Poe, too anxious to sit by his side, endeared himself to the nurses and became an honorary one of them, running messages and refilling glasses and holding rolls of gauze for the exhausted, overworked girls. They kissed both his and Finn’s cheeks when finally they disembarked in London. From there, straight onto another train to take them home; Luke met them at the station, and now they return to Millennium House together.

“Careful,” Finn hardly has time to say before Rey has thrown herself into his arms and taken his face between her un-gloved hands. She is babbling hopelessly, exclaiming his name over and over with regret and relief, the most joyous lament; her lips are wet with tears when finally she presses them to his.

“You’re here,” she murmurs, her breath warm. “You’re home.”

“And he’s going to freeze if we don’t get him inside,” Luke reminds her. He takes Finn’s good arm in his own, squeezing it with great affection as they proceed up the path, Rey racing ahead to throw open the front door and announce Finn’s return. Luke smiles at his ward, his eyes endlessly warm: “Hello, my dear boy. How glad I am to see you.”

They have saved Christmas dinner for them. Never mind that tomorrow is New Year’s Eve and the rest of the country has fêted already; the soldiers in the house have all been informed and gamely agreed to wait. Leia comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and there are tears in her eyes, too, when she bends and embraces Finn with tender care.

“We’re so happy to have you back.” Her face shines like his mother’s once did: Finn remembers.

The house smells of spice and warmth and Christmas. A goose roasts in the oven, stuffed in there by two of the ablest soldiers, happy to break the routine of life in convalescence even by helping out in the kitchen: Cora has enlisted a dozen of them, to peel potatoes, stir the sauces, steam the pudding. Several others have been hard at work decorating, and garlands and tinsel deck every hall. A fire roars in the drawing-room’s hearth. Finn is warmer than he has been in weeks.

At supper, the family eat in the dining-room, the soldiers in every other room; even Ben, home from Oxford and deep in melancholy, troops down from his room to join them. Toasts are drunk to Finn’s health and happiness, and to Poe for bringing him home. By now they have all heard the story of his trek across the battlefield, Finn draped over his back, but there is nothing like arrogance in Poe’s tone when he tells it, only a kind of reverent fear.

“I knew I had to bring him home,” he says, again and again. “I couldn’t live without him. We couldn’t.”

The pain grows bad during supper. Finn had been saving all his strength to be cheerful for his family, but now it is leaving him; his body rebels. The climb upstairs wearies him, and he is yawning by the time Poe and Rey have helped him into his pyjamas.

Rey fluffs the pillow behind his head and tucks his hands beneath the blankets, her motions well-practised on so many other soldiers. He is already falling asleep as she tends to him, a frown knitting his forehead. She does not want to leave him: no matter how well the wound is healing, and no matter how bravely he looked and fought during the day, he is still fragile, still hurt.

“Come, Rey,” Poe says gently. “Come down for pudding. He’ll sleep.”

She shakes her head, still looking at Finn. “I can’t.”

Poe understands. He kisses her and goes back downstairs, leaving her with Finn; and Rey holds Finn’s hand and strokes his cheek when he cries out in his sleep, the moonlight and her hand smoothing the creases from his brow. He’s home.

After supper, another of the nurses comes in to relieve Rey; she had had a full night’s shift and half the day as well before Poe and Finn arrived, and needs rest. At his bedside her eyes have drifted shut, but she starts awake when the other girl comes in. With reluctant, whispered protests, Rey leaves Finn in her care, and goes down the hall to her own bedroom.

Downstairs, the gentlemen finish their port as Leia slips out to help Cora with her nightly cocoa rounds. Luke and Poe chat about politics, finance, flying — anything but the wedding or the war. Ben is silent, morose; when asked, kindly, by Poe, if something is wrong, he murmurs that he is only tired. Poe has not been home to hear this same excuse every night since Ben came down from school, so he smiles, and says he hopes Ben sleeps well tonight, for it’s Christmastime and they should be of good cheer. Ben smiles wanly back and excuses himself to bed.

Poe’s parents do not expect him home until tomorrow, so he will spend the night here, in a spare room. When their glasses are empty, Poe excuses himself, leaving Luke frowning over the evening news.

Poe stops in the room he’s been given, divests himself of his dinner-jacket, and then pads softly down the hall to Rey’s room. He knocks lightly; as soon as the door has closed behind him, his fiancée is in his arms, bestowing on him every kiss the past months have stolen from them.

“I was going to go to bed; I’ve been so distracted, I almost forgot you were staying,” Rey says breathlessly between kisses, drawing him back to the bed. “I’m so glad I didn’t. I’ve missed you, Poe.”

“I’ve missed you, too, sweetheart.”

Sitting on the bed, he lifts her into his lap, and her unbuttoned nightgown falls to her hips as she straddles his waist and kisses him hungrily. He reaches to cup one breast in his hand, and she exhales, chasing his mouth with her own. She tips her head back and lets Poe kiss and suck all down her neck, heedless of whether he leaves love-bites behind: she is his and she cares not who knows it.

They switch places, Poe laying Rey down on the bed to press himself atop her, feeling the soft warmth of her body against his. He has known no touch but Finn’s and his own for months, and has ached for her; the sweet, half-formed little noises she’s making only intensify his longing. He kisses her, tongues into her mouth, and feels her clinging to him, her sensibly-trimmed nails trailing sensation over his skin.

“I want you inside me,” she begs, breathless, opening her eyes.

Poe hesitates, at once remembering: “I don’t have anything.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

He has been with none of the girls in the French and Belgian brothels; the other men have indulged, sometimes to excess — a shameful number have been sent home with unmentionable ailments. But Poe has always remained faithful to his two loves. He nods. “Come here.”

He sits back; she spreads her legs; he works her open with his fingers at first, pressuring the spot inside that makes her gasp and tremble. She is wet already; very soon she stops him, murmurs, “Now.”

Their bodies join. She pulls him to her, brings him deep inside; he kisses her, hot and longing, as they move together. His thrusts are slow, the roll of his hips making her cry out in rapture. They have been apart so long.

“Don’t leave me,” she murmurs, her hand moving between her legs as he kisses her breasts as if they were holy. “Don’t go away again.”

“I have to.” The words kissed into her skin, a sorrow. “You know I do.”

She sighs. The tide builds within them both, and when it breaks over her he is quick to follow. He spills himself inside of her: they are one, completely. They lay there a moment, clasped tight, breathing.

When he pulls out of her, he makes to dress and go, but she calls him back: “Stay.”

They have so little time together. He cannot refuse. They sleep entwined; wake, make love again; and drift into peaceful rest as the winter sun rises above them.

 

* * *

 

One day near the end of his leave, in the first days of the new year, Poe takes Rey into town for supper. He insists that she take a break from work, that Finn — asleep — will be fine for an hour or two in Hattie’s care. As he’d hoped, she’s slowly relaxed over the course of the evening, laughing as gaily as she ever did before the war. Now, late, they are finishing their puddings, and Poe knows that he must tell her.

“I’m going back soon,” he begins, after a brief lull in their talk. The restaurant is packed with off-duty soldiers and their girls, and the hum of chatter is exuberant and loud. “Just a few more days.”

Rey winces. The dwindling number of days they have left is the first thing on her mind every morning. “I know.” She drags her fork through the pool of custard on her plate.

“And I’ve been thinking…when I do go, I want to go back to fly,” Poe expels. He grins, and expects Rey to smile back, happy for him — but instead her expression turns worried.

“No,” she blurts, frowning. Her fork clatters down. “Oh, Poe, surely you don’t mean to —”

“But whyever not, my love?” Poe answers, his hopeful cheer dissipating. “I’ve missed it so, and they always need more pilots — and skilled ones, too.”

“They need more because they _lose_ them so often,” Rey retorts, her brows tightly knit. “Poe, darling, please don’t. Caroline’s letters — she’s treated so many wounded airmen; she says their injuries are among the worst she’s ever seen. I can’t bear the thought of something happening to you.” And although she tries to hold them back, her eyes now fill with tears.

“Oh, Rey. Oh, don’t cry, sweet girl,” Poe soothes her, reaching across the table to take up her hands and squeeze them. He feels the gold of her engagement band, warmed by her skin. “I’ll be safe. I don’t mean to boast, but I’m very good at what I do — I’ve never been hurt flying before.”

“But you haven’t flown at _war_ before! It’s different, Poe, everything is different now. You’ll be in danger,” Rey protests. “Tell me you haven’t made any plans for certain.”

“Well…” Poe sighs, sheepish. “I wrote to London this morning, requesting a posting wherever they might need me.”

“You didn’t,” Rey whispers. She shakes off his hands, her eyes angry and yet beseeching. “Darling, _please…_ send them a wire, tell them you’ve changed your mind.”

“I can’t,” Poe tells her. “I’m sorry. I’ve ached to be in the air again; it’s where I feel at home. I joined the infantry to be with Finn, but he won’t be coming back with me, so I see no reason to stay…I miss it, Rey. I miss it so terribly. I’m not meant to be on the ground.”

“You won’t be safe,” Rey insists again; but her resistance grows weaker. She hates to keep him from what he loves, when she knows he is yearning; but all the same…

 _The injured pilots._ Caro’s letters tell grim stories of their burns and wounds, so much more dramatic than those sustained by soldiers on the ground — assuming they last long enough for her to treat them at all. Aviators are a short-lived lot, as easily snuffed-out as dandelions by the wind… _but the air is where his heart lies._

Rey looks up. She takes Poe’s hands in hers, this time, and looks him in the eye. “Promise me,” she says. “Promise me you’ll come home to us.”

“I promise,” Poe says, ardent. He picks up their joined hands and kisses them. “I promise you. You and Finn both.”

Rey thinks briefly, again, of pushing the question of marriage; but their plans are essentially finalised. The invitations were sent months ago and RSVPs are still trickling in. The dressmaker is coming for another fitting tomorrow — Rey’s had to squeeze her in between shifts. Soon they’ll have to order flowers. It would be an inconvenience to everyone if she pressed the issue now. _It’s just six weeks more. Not long at all._

“Keep your promise,” she says instead. “Come home.”

The RFC send their reply within days. Poe’s application has been eagerly accepted, his credentials hailed as a blessing: no need to train him, he can begin right away. He is officially a member of the newly-formed 9th Squadron, Royal Flying Corps; they have not yet appointed a leader, and Poe will take that post.

“I’m to report to HQ by the ninth, and I’ll be in France four days after that,” Poe tells Rey and Finn excitedly. He’d sped over to the house to burst in to Finn’s sickroom, telegram in hand; Rey had been changing Finn’s bandages, the two of them laughing quietly about something — but when she saw that yellow paper, Rey’s face fell at once.

“Darling,” she says, standing and wiping her hands on her apron, trying to put on a smile. “That’s…oh, that’s so soon.”

“We still have time,” he assures her merrily, coming to her side, squeezing her waist, kissing the top of her head before sitting down beside Finn on the bed. He takes up his good hand. “I don’t want you two to worry,” Poe tells them. “It won’t make things any better for any of us if you do. Know that I’ll be happy. I’ll be doing what I’m meant to do.”

“We will worry,” Finn counters softly, looking up at him. “Of course we will.”

“We know you fly well,” Rey adds, “but so do the Germans. It’s _war,_ Poe. No-one is ever truly safe. Anything could happen out there.”

“And your worrying won’t make a difference either way,” Poe cuts in neatly. He strokes Finn’s face, his thumb caressing his cheek. “Rest. Heal. Take care of each other,” he says. “I’ll take care of myself.”

“It’s not as simple as that.” Finn’s voice is quiet, sad.

“Don’t go yet,” Rey instructs Poe sharply. “I’ll be right back.” She gathers up the dirtied bandages and slips out of the room to discard them.

Poe glances over to make sure she has gone before he turns back to Finn. “I _will_ come home,” he begins, his voice quieter now, almost hesitant, “but if I don’t, Finn…” He sighs. He interlaces his fingers with Finn’s and squeezes, hard, looks him in the eyes. “Promise me you’ll take care of her. Make sure she’s happy.”

“I will,” Finn replies immediately, struck by the solemnity of his tone. He swallows. “But I won’t have to. Promise me that.”

Poe looks at him, and smiles, almost sadly — and now, here, Rey is back, and looking curiously at the two of them in conference. “Is something wrong?” she asks.

Poe’s expression smooths. “No, no. It’s nothing. Don’t fret.” He rises, kisses Finn’s forehead. “I have to go; I only dropped by to tell you the news. I’ll be back tomorrow,” he assures them, kissing Rey again at the door. “And every day until I leave. Goodbye, my loves.”

Finn and Rey murmur their goodbyes. When Poe has gone, Rey comes over to sit at Finn’s side again, absently adjusting the blankets around him. “Four days,” she says, melancholy.

“Four days,” Finn repeats. They are both silent.

“Do you think I should have —” Rey begins, and then cuts herself off, shaking her head. “No. No. Never mind.” She sighs, seeming to draw herself up. “I’m being foolish. Of course there will be time,” she says, half to herself.

Finn understands. “He’ll marry you,” he tells her. “He’ll come home safe and marry you. It’s only a matter of time. That’s all this war is, is a waiting-game.”

“Mm. I never have been patient.”

Rey is still for a moment, contemplative; and then she crumples. Silently, Finn opens his arms, and she lies down beside him, curling against his good side. Her body shakes.

They hold one another. Their fears loom above them, waiting.

 

* * *

 

True to his word, Poe visits them every day until he leaves. On that last night, Rey shows him into the library, where a small candlelit spread has been laid out for them by Cora. Leia, Luke, and Ben have quietly disappeared, letting the three of them have their last night alone. Poe can’t spend the night: he has to leave for HQ at dawn, so they say their farewells after supper, close to midnight.

“I don’t like to have to do this again,” Rey whispers, in his arms at the door. “Another goodbye.”

“Only for a little while,” Poe promises, as he had the last time. They break their embrace, and Poe turns to Finn and takes his chin in his hand, first glancing about to see they are alone. The wards are dark; they are unobserved. He kisses him, and Finn returns it, deep and aching.

Rey puts her hands on both their backs and closes her eyes: they are as a circuit, connected by some pure and divine energy. _A bond never to be broken,_ she thinks, or prays.

Finally it is time for Poe to leave. He kisses them each once more, tells them he loves them and is told in return.

“I’ll come home,” Poe promises, one last time. “Wait for me.” He gives his charming grin, and is gone into the winter night.

Finn thinks of their words the night before, the promise he himself had made. _Please, my love, keep yours, so I need never keep mine._

 

* * *

 

_13 January 1915  
St.-O., France_

_Hello, my dear ones!_

_I am quite well settled-in at the airfield now; we made the crossing safe and sound and arrived here two days ago. I am in charge of seventeen other men, of whom I am among the oldest (fancy that!), and the most experienced besides. My observer is a cracking young lad by the name of Albert Baker, with a mop of red curls like you’ve never seen; the men all call him ‘B.B.’ and I expect I shall pick up the habit soon enough myself. My second is called Thomas Wexley — his smile is almost as big as his beard — and he has a nickname, too, ‘Snap.’ I wonder how long before one is bestowed upon me._

_We have been very busy adjusting to one another, and to the machines. I’m afraid I can’t tell you what kinds of kites we are flying but I can say that they are_ lovely _and_ fast! _What fun we’d have in these. Perhaps they’ll let me keep one once all this business has ended. We have solidified our groupings and our formations are flying well; not all my men are experienced but they are learning quickly. We have flown one or two reconnaissance patrols over Belgium already and have, I am told, taken some topping photographs. How happy I am to be back in the skies!_

_Don’t fret for me. The Huns are quiet and have not bothered us yet. Thinking of you always,_

_Your Poe._

“Look, Finn. He’s sent along a photograph.” Smiling, Rey extricates the print from the envelope and brings it over to Finn’s bed. They peer down at it together.

In the picture, Poe is posing by what must be his plane — Finn recognises it as a little Bristol Scout. His cap is tipped back on his brow, his goggles pushed up and his curls spilling out. The flared lapels of his long leather flight-jacket frame the white silk scarf that is tied jauntily round his neck. He’s grinning, beaming, looking like there’s nowhere else in the world he’d rather be.

Rey sighs. “Look at him. He’s so handsome, isn’t he?”

“The handsomest pilot in the whole Flying Corps,” Finn agrees.

“I miss him already.” Rey props the photo on Finn’s bedside table, smiling fondly but sadly at it. It’s late in the evening, she has just finished her shift; Finn had been reading by candlelight when she came in to check on him before going to bed. She hadn’t expected to find him awake, but had brought Poe’s letter — received this afternoon, set aside as a treat for later, looked forward to all day — with her just in case. “How are you feeling?”

Finn holds out his wounded arm for her to inspect, her fingers light and careful — or at least they look to be. Strange, this pain: the wound hurts him, but at the site itself he feels nothing. He is aware of a pulsing, ever-present, all-over hurt, emanating not from one specific place, but acute all the same. When Rey changes the dressing she will follow it with half a dose of morphine; he has learned to take this much, although it leaves some pain behind. He knows how badly she fears the development of a dependence.

His bandages are clean, now: Rey made a noise of satisfaction when she peeled the old ones back. Every day there is less discharge, less blood. Once the physical wound has fully healed, they will begin to test his range of motion, to see how the arm can still be used, and build up both its strength and that of his other arm, which now must needs be his dominant one. Finn knows this will be a long and frustrating process, and every day there is still blood on the dressing is a tiny relief, for the rehabilitation cannot yet start. He does not like to think that he will be less than he once was.

“I almost forgot,” Rey says, coming back into the dim-lit bedroom after having disposed of the dirty dressing. “Do you remember Lady Maud Monmouth, from the suffragists’ league in town, with the lovely auburn hair? I had to run down to the shops today and I saw her. She told me that the league have started their meetings again, but with far fewer women in attendance — not all of them want to come anymore.”

“Why not? Have they lost interest in the cause?” This is disheartening to think.

Rey hesitates, suddenly seeming to regret the avenue down which she’s taken the conversation. “Well — the thing is, it’s not quite the same cause anymore.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know much about it, really, but…” Despite her initial excitement to tell him, she is now embarrassed. She decides simply to say it: “Those of them who are still meeting believe that the war is unnecessary. That it should end, and end soon.”

This is hardly revolutionary rhetoric, but it’s an opinion so rarely expressed that it feels strange to speak aloud. It’s strange to hear, too: Finn nearly asks her to repeat herself. “Are they Quakers?” he asks, dumbfounded.

Rey shrugs. “Some of them, maybe. I hear one of them’s a Marxist, or at the very least a real socialist. I don’t know. But…I thought perhaps I’d attend one of the meetings again, if I can spare the time. Lady Maud’s invited me, and I’d hate to turn her down.”

“Could I come with you?” Finn’s words surprise them both.

Rey blinks, looking down at his bandaged arm. “Are you sure you’d be up to it?”

The thought of meeting with a group of people who feel the same about the war as Finn does — sick of it, dismayed by the eagerness with which the rest of the country still eggs it on — is like a balm, for Finn’s wound and his worry both. Mere talk will not end the war and bring Poe home at once, but Finn would feel like he was doing something, to occupy these long empty hours. He nods, vigorously. “Yes. I would.”

Rey looks bemused, but she nods. “I’ll speak to Maud whenever I can. I think Poe will find you much changed when he comes home,” she adds, winking and tweaking his ear. “Our Marxist, hm?”

“I just think it would be interesting,” he protests; but she is smiling. She pats his fresh bandage, gently:

“Well, darling, you’re all set, and I should be heading off to bed. Do you need anything else before I go?”

“Actually —” Finn hesitates. Since he has been home, he has been sleeping alone, in his own bed. He missed this, at the front, and thought he would be glad to have it back; but now, he finds he is lonely at night, unable to get to sleep without the sound of Poe’s breathing, his body next to him. The snores and cries of the other men he doesn’t miss, but sleeping alone has become strange to him. “Would you…stay?”

“Are you all right?” At once Rey is back at his side, frowning, laying a hand on his brow to check for fever. “Does it hurt?”

“No. I’m fine. I just — I miss you.” He looks up at her, suddenly shy, as if he has come home a stranger. “Would you sleep in here tonight?”

“Oh, sweetheart.” An impulsive kiss to his cheek. “Of course.” Her brow furrows. “I wouldn’t want to jar the wound in my sleep — I’ll fetch a cot, give me a minute.” And she disappears; even with the overflow of soldiers, they still have one or two spare beds in supply.

Finn waits patiently, and she returns in no time, lightly flushed and huffing from dragging the cot up the stairs. She sets it up at the foot of his bed, makes up the sheets with a nurse’s efficient flourish, and then disappears again, returning moments later in her nightgown. Coming to Finn’s bedside — his eyes are already drifting closed — she kisses his lips and says, “Goodnight, my love. I’m here if you need me.”

“Goodnight, Rey. Thank you.” She climbs under her covers; he snuffs out the light. Finn sleeps soundly that night, alone no more.

She spends every night from then on in Finn’s sickroom; and when his wound is at last declared safely healed, he asks her to join him in his bed. Rey acquiesces with no hesitation, and spends that first night in his arms.

It comes as no surprise when, days later, their goodnight kiss lingers, and turns into more; his hands under her nightgown, her fingers on his flies. They make love tenderly, careful of his wound. The cot soon returns downstairs. The pain of Poe’s absence lingers, but they sleep soundly now, together.

 

* * *

 

A reconnaissance flight over France one evening, after a long and leisurely day. The other squadrons near them have been busy, strafing German sites, but as yet Poe’s men have only been called to take photographs: an important job, to be sure, but one that gets tedious very quickly. By the end of their flight, as the shadows have begun to lengthen and make their duty more difficult, Poe is feeling a need for some excitement.

 “B.B., tell me — that’s never Arras, just there?”

Albert consults his map quickly, but the white hulk of the town’s Gothic cathedral is visible and unmistakeable even in the dark. “Yes, sir. Why d’you ask?”

Poe shrugs. “Send the others on back. We’ll be in shortly.”

“Sir?” B.B., having fired his light, turns to Poe as the rest of the flight turns for home. “What are we doing?” He doesn’t look concerned, but excited at the prospect of adventure, or at least a change from routine.

Poe smiles. He pushes the throttle down and slows the engine, circling gently to prepare for a landing. He can just make out their side’s lines. “A chap I know from home is stationed out here. I thought we’d pay him a visit.”

They land behind British lines. At once there is a quiet commotion on the ground, a swarm of shapes moving through the darkness to crowd around the plane: Poe kills the engine and they hop out of the cockpit, to be greeted with wide-eyed, dirt-smeared faces under equally filthy caps. 

Poe grins. “Evening, gentlemen! I’m looking for a friend.”

“You haven’t crashed, then?” a Tommy asks, sounding distinctly disappointed.

“Afraid not, my lad.”

At this there are murmurs. The men’s faces droop, and the crowd quickly disperses; Poe almost laughs at the anti-climax. He snags the sleeve of a departing private and asks cheerily, “Might you direct me to Captain Brendon Huxley of the First Northamptonshires?”

Hux is in the officers’ dugout, eating the tepid, peppery pea soup distributed by the orderly at midnight every night and wishing it would do anything to shake the chill permanently settled in his bones, when Carlton pokes his head in. “Visitor for you, sir.”

Hux rises, frowning —  _HQ, at this time of night? —_ and then nearly falls back into his seat when Poe Dameron and a grinning, freckle-faced lad appear behind Carlton. “Mr Dameron,” he says, utterly shocked. He goes to the doorframe and doesn’t salute, but instead holds his hand out to Poe, automatically, as though they were meeting at a ball. “What an absolute surprise to see you here. How did you get — why —?”

Poe takes his hand and pumps it enthusiastically. “Good evening, Huxley! Thought we’d drop in,” he says, beaming, and indicates the young man beside him. “My observer, Albert Baker.”

“Pleasure, sir,” Baker chimes in, saluting and then shaking Hux’s hand too. “Call me B.B. Everyone does.”

“But what on earth are you doing here?” Hux repeats, flabbergasted. He takes in Poe’s uniform: “You’re flying now?”

Poe nods. “Finn was wounded — don’t worry, he’s doing very well. I had leave near Christmas so I went back home with him; he won’t be in active service again, so I decided to make use of myself doing what I do best.” He pats the wings on his chest with pride.

“You were at Millennium House?” Hux asks, paying little heed to the rest.

 Poe correctly interprets the urgency in his tone. “Yes, I was, and Ben was as well. He mentioned your being posted near Arras, last he’d heard. We were out on a patrol, and found ourselves near here; figured it’d be a shame not to come say hello.”

“We leave tomorrow night and go back to billets,” Hux replies, only half-paying attention. The sound of Ben’s name has caused his heartbeat to start racing. “You’re lucky you caught me tonight.” He shakes his head, belatedly aware of how rude he has been: “Please! Sit. Finn was wounded, you say? I’m sorry to hear it. Would you like tea? Cocoa? Something stronger?”

“We still have to fly back tonight, so just cocoa’ll do, thank you,” Poe answers for them both: Albert had looked mighty cheerful at the prospect of something stronger, and his face now falls. Poe pulls out a chair at Hux’s table for himself, and B.B. sits down too, as Hux fetches cocoa in tin cups for all three of them. Poe raises his mug in the loyal toast: “To His Majesty.”

“His Majesty,” Hux and B.B. repeat before taking their drinks. Hux swallows down the grainy chocolate with a wince and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. _At least it’s warm._ “So you’re serious, then — that’s really why you’re here? Just to say hello?” he asks again, still disbelieving. It all seems so improbable.

Poe nods. “Yes, indeed. I didn’t see much of Ben, but I could tell he’s been worried about you — it’ll do him good to hear that I’ve seen you,” he adds, gently.

Hux is sure Poe hadn’t intended to make him feel guilty, but he _does,_ horribly, now, for the weeks of letters that have been piling up unanswered. Things have been hectic lately, they’ve lost men, their supplies are dwindling at an alarming rate — he opens his mouth to begin telling Poe all this, aware of how worthless all this will sound when voiced aloud, but Poe holds up a hand.

“I know,” Poe says. “I don’t blame you at all — I know as well as anyone how hard it can be out here. But I know how hard it is at home, too.” He sips his cocoa again, and adds, “He misses you.”

There is no insinuation in his tone, nor blame; Albert Baker, who has polished off his mug with a fervour, does not look suspicious or alarmed. From what Poe has said, Ben could easily be Hux’s younger brother, or a friend invalided home. _Let’s keep it that way._

“I am sorry,” Hux says levelly, setting his tin cup down. “I — I’ve been remiss, I know. I had hoped…I had thought he’d be busy enough not to notice,” he confesses. He knows from Ben’s letters how feeble an excuse this is, and can only hope that Poe doesn’t. “I see I was mistaken. I’ve applied for leave, and should get a decision soon; I’ll write to him straightaway.”

“He’ll be glad to hear from you.” Poe smiles, kindly, at Hux, who looks away in shame.

A tenuous silence falls. Albert Baker drums his fingers on the table-top, whistling ‘Are We Downhearted?’ under his breath. From the main trench, the noises of night-work drift up. Poe drains his mug, and then clears his throat, standing gracefully:

“Thank you for your hospitality, Huxley,” he says. “We’d best be getting back to base.”

Hux rises, too. “Thank you for dropping in,” he says, and realises he means it. He and Poe have never been close, and he feels guilty, now, over Ben, but the sight of a face from home has cheered him more than he can say. “Feel free to come again, if ever you’re in our neck of the woods.” He smiles: the expression feels strange.

“We certainly will.” Poe tips his cap to Hux, and B.B. dips an extravagant bow; and then they are gone.

Soon enough Hux hears the distant coughing and sputtering of an aeroplane engine starting up, and imagines them soaring off into the night sky, back over France to their airfield, wherever it might be. He remains seated at the table, staring into the dregs of his drink: he’d been unable to finish it. Keegan and the others will be back from their wiring-party soon, and he’ll no longer have the dugout to himself. He had hoped to catch some sleep before they returned — but now he changes his mind.

He goes to his own bunk (only one more night sleeping on sandbags and they’ll be back in billets again), and searches under the makeshift mattress for the bundle he’s kept of Ben’s letters. Swallowing a wave of homesickness, Hux takes them to the table and sits down with paper, pen, and ink.

 _Dear Ben,_ he writes.

He stops. He picks up the pen again.

_Dear Ben,_

_I’m alive. I’m sorry. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you._

He had not known he was crying until the tears splattered on the page.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes: "Gentleman's gentleman" was _absolutely_ period slang for "manservant," which is just too good. Bayonet charges were pretty uncommon by this time, but a few of them did take place during this war; this one is not one of them. The comment about aviators being like dandelions in the wind was paraphrased lovingly from [The Dust That Falls from Dreams](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25722634-the-dust-that-falls-from-dreams).
> 
> I'm on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com)!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a big one, kiddos. Warnings for minor character death; dubiously consensual and indubitably depressing sex; and the first, but not the last, **major character death.** Read carefully.

* * *

 

That very night, Hux’s leave is granted: beginning January the twenty-second, a mere four days from now. Rather impertinently, he’d taken a chance and made his request directly to Snow, thinking back to their conversation after Quinn’s death — but the risk pays off. Snow snorted, muttered something about not being surprised, and bumped Hux’s name right up the list, a favour for which Hux felt only a little guilty, now that Ben is once again at the forefront of his thoughts.

(Even with the promise of leave, though, there are still dead boys in his dreams.)

The day he will go home is unseasonably warm, only a light chill breeze disturbing the warmth of the unexpected sunshine. After an uneventful stand-to, followed by cold stew and hard biscuits and chlorine-tasting tea for breakfast, Hux settles down to work in the officers’ dugout with Major Fairley, his immediate superior.

George Fairley is a pleasant, mild-mannered man, blond-haired and soft-spoken; on the young side for his post, but an effective leader nonetheless. He’s been in charge of B Company since Major Tarkin’s death a fortnight ago, and his calm command has been a welcome respite from the older major’s sharp, unforgiving governance. He keeps a photograph of his family in his tunic, close to his heart, as do many of the men, and Hux has seen it: a lovely wife, Dora, and three-year-old twins called Matthew and Lucy. When Fairley speaks of them, and of their cottage on the Dover coast, Hux can see the wistful love in his eyes.

This morning, Fairley pulls toward him at their rickety shared desk a stack of the men’s letters to censor.

“No matter how many times I do this, I can’t stop feeling guilty,” he comments to Hux, who himself is beginning on a report to HQ with regards to the state of their inventory. _More rifle-oil urgently needed. Food supplies fair. Several box-periscopes damaged but usable, send three more if possible._ “It’s not quite the thing, is it, intruding on a man’s private life like this?”

“A necessary evil,” Hux replies with sympathy. “Can’t have military secrets ending up in some poor girl’s scrapbook back home.”

Fairley grins, holding up the first few messily-scrawled letters for Hux to see. “I can hardly read half the men’s handwriting. I doubt Fritz could, either.”

Hux smiles. “Fair enough.”

“You’re going back to Blighty today, aren’t you?” Fairley remembers. “Lucky sod.”

“I am, yes.” Hux gives a dry smile. “Assuming I survive until my train leaves tonight.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Fairley raises his mug of tea and winks.

The two men bend to their tasks in companionable silence. Around them, slightly at a distance, are the usual noises of a morning in the trench: the hiss and sizzle of bacon frying (the first round of sentries are coming down for breakfast); the joking and chatting of the men; every now and then, the _hiss_ and _whump_ of a shell landing in No-Man’s Land. But these are few and far between. Everyone seems in high spirits because of the weather, even, apparently, the Boches across the way.

There’s a melody winding its way through Hux’s thoughts as he looks over the columns of numbers and text on the several documents he’s sifting through, transcribing the necessary information into the draft of his report. It’s familiar — Schubert, one of his favourites, the notes tripping, tumbling, swaying like the lyrics’ boat; hurried but not urgent; relaxed and gentle as the feeling in the air this morning.

He almost doesn’t notice when he starts humming under his breath — until, that is, Fairley picks up the tune, and then opens his mouth to sing along, in a gentle, well-kept baritone: _“Mitten im Schimmer den spiegelden Wellen…”_

Hux looks up in surprise, and finds a smile breaking across his face. Impulsive, charmed, he joins in softly, his own tenor weaving neatly above Fairley’s lower voice. They sing a few lines together: _“…tanzet das Abendrot rund um den Kahn,”_ they finish, glancing with amusement at one another as they do.

Fairley gives a chuckle. “Don’t let the men hear us; they’ll have us shot for traitors.”

Hux laughs. “Traitor or not, you sing well, sir. Were you trained?”

Fairley nods. “My uncle was the choirmaster at our village church. I picked it up from him, I suppose.” He inclines his head to Hux: “You do as well, Huxley. Something to pursue after this is all over?” he asks with a wry smile.

“Not singing Schubert, I don’t think,” Hux replies. “Unless, that is, we lose.”

“Mm,” Fairley responds, quirking an eyebrow. He gestures down to the stack of letters, several of them now bearing black markings through sensitive words. “I suppose it’s myself I should be censoring now, isn’t it?”

“I won’t tell HQ if you don’t.”

They share a conspiratorial smile and then bend back to their work. This time it’s Fairley who starts humming again — the same piece, softly, under his breath — and Hux is content to listen, finishing his first report and beginning on the next. The sun illuminates the pages in front of him, and although he’s certain this weather won’t last, he’s determined to enjoy it while he can. He has fewer reports today than he has lately; he has already cleaned his gun, and his next shift as sentry isn’t until the evening; he thinks with pleasure of sitting down to read, maybe, and then taking a well-deserved nap. He smiles to himself at the prospect.

Fairley has finished with a stack of letters and is reaching for another when Private Welling pokes his head into the dugout. “Major Fairley? You’re needed.”

Fairley glances up, gives a nod, strikes out another word in the letter in front of him: “Right away, lad.” He sets down his pen and pushes back his chair, raising his eyebrows at Hux. “Don’t slack off in my absence, now, Huxley,” he jests.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

Fairley follows Welling into the main trench. Hux can hear shouting, an argument of some kind; such things aren’t uncommon in the trenches, the men run ragged as they are, emotions and tensions high. Fairley has obviously been called to arbitrate the disagreement and send the men back on their way. Hux hears him whistling as he goes.

He bends back to his report —  _How many engineers have you in your company,_ HQ wants to know, _reply immediately —_ and half-listens to the argument being put to an end, the men’s indignant voices interrupted by Fairley’s calm one, and then their ire calming too. All is well again.

And then, suddenly, it isn’t.

The distant wailing of shells is all at once louder, close, immediate — Hux stands from his chair, prepares to take cover — but already he can see the projectile arcing through the clear blue sky, and can tell that it will come up short of him: that he, at least, will be safe.

The other men, though, are not so lucky.

In the main corridor Hux can hear them shouting warnings, see them diving into funk-holes for cover: but they, like him, seem to have been lulled by the calm of the morning, and they do not react quickly enough. The shell lands. Hux hears screams, and then the explosion.

In the aftermath his ears ring. He stands from where he has crouched to the ground, and makes his way out into the corridor, dreading what he will find there.

At first, Hux thinks that three are dead. Three men lie on the floor, tossed like rag-dolls by the blast. As Hux hurries from the dugout with a sick feeling in his stomach, so too do the other men emerge from their hiding-places, and rush to the prone figures; but soon enough two stir and groan. One man’s head is bleeding badly. The other, horribly, is missing a leg. When he sees the gushing stump, he begins to scream, and keeps screaming as his comrades rush to him.

The sound goes on and on and on. The third man has not stirred. Hux approaches, pushing through the chaos, and looks down on the mangled body of George Fairley.

A hand on his arm. “Sir.” It’s Private Welling, the same young man who’d fetched Fairley from the dugout. His face is green. “Sir. What do we do? What do we do with him?” The boy is new. This is only his first week at the front.

At first Hux doesn’t understand — “Why are you asking me,” he begins — and then he realises. He is Fairley’s second-in-command. Fairley is dead. Hux is in charge, now. The company is his.

He looks into Welling’s stricken face. _God help him. God help us all._

His instincts kick in from somewhere far away. “Take Suffolk to the aid post,” he instructs the men who are attempting to tourniquet this man’s blown-off leg, hearing his own voice strangely in his ringing ears. At his command, Suffolk’s friends hoist him up between them and take him away. The man’s screams still echo. _Ignore it. Ignore him. Focus._

“Can you walk, McCann?” Hux asks the other man, the one with the head wound. He is dazed, blood is running into and over his eyes, but he nods, weakly, and Hux tells the man closest to him, “Go with him. Aid post.”

These two dispatch themselves. Only Fairley — what is left of him — remains.

Hux stares down at the body in numb disbelief. Only minutes ago they had spoken; they had sung, laughed together, shared a brief bright moment amidst the bleak darkness of war. He is gone, and Hux must take his place.

“Sir?” Welling again, looking unsteady on his feet. 

Hux clears his throat. “Call the bearers,” he says quietly. “They’ll take him to be buried.”

“Yes, sir.” Welling races off to do as he is bid, no doubt relieved to be away from the carnage.

The other men still stand around, faces frozen variously in looks of sadness, disbelief, and fear. Hux registers dimly how foolish they are — sitting ducks, like this — but understands the paralysis that has settled over them all, himself included. This had not seemed possible, on a day like today. _And Fairley, of all of us. A good man. A better man than me._

“Move along, all of you,” Hux says finally, his voice tight. He waves a hand, sharp. “Back to your posts.”

The men un-freeze, slowly, and shuffle back whence they came. There is no chatter, no laughter now, not even subdued, and the welcome sunshine is now mocking. Reality has set back in.

Hux returns to the dugout and feels himself a different man than when he left it. Numbly, he sits down at the table, and looks at his work without seeing it. Now that he has been put (so suddenly, so brutally) in command, the censoring of letters falls to him…and, too — the realisation falls heavy — the reporting of deaths and wounds.

And so it is that Hux must write his first official letter of condolence, to Dora Fairley and her twins, with the soft sounds of Schubert still waltzing through his head.

 

* * *

 

Hux wrote to Ben as soon as his leave was granted, and Ben receives the news two days later:

_Ben,_

_I’ve gotten a week’s leave beginning 22 January. Will only be able to come as far as London, from Dover, for the 23rd. Can you meet me there? Please arrange for rooms, near Paddington if possible. I need to see you._

Hux’s ordinarily perfect hand is messy, rushed; Ben can sense the desperation behind the tightly composed words. The twenty-third is three days from now. Ben has classes, responsibilities, he has only just got back from Christmas break. He hesitates not a second before scrawling a wire in reply: _Will be in London 23rd._

Ben arranges everything that very day. They will not stay in Luke’s London house, for fear of the servants talking, so he rents them two rooms in a modest home on Shouldham Street, from a kindly Irish widow whose son was killed at Mons. When Ben arrives on the evening of the twenty-third, he sees the young man’s name and photograph on the black-edged card in the front window, and quickly averts his gaze: those cards seem to him ill omens. He unpacks his things in one of their rooms, takes supper with Mrs Laighill the landlady, and goes to bed early, the bright moonlight shining even through the newly-hung blackout curtain.

He goes to Paddington early next morning, the day Hux is to arrive. Although she’d promised breakfast, Mrs Laighill was not awake when he left, and he finds he’s hungry; he goes to a grim, dingy café at the station and orders eggs and kippers, a cup of tea. He takes a seat at a table where he can see the tracks. He eats his meagre breakfast (the fish are too salty, the eggs not enough; the tea is weak and greyish, un-sugared), and glances back and forth between the station clock and the tracks.

Soon enough the ten o’clock from Dover comes in, just a few minutes late, and Ben pays and gets up to walk over to the platform. His heart is beating too fast in his chest: he had been anxious, watching the minutes tick by with no sign of the train, but now here it is, and any moment he will see Hux again. Soon he’ll be in his arms, behind the locked doors of the rooms on Shouldham Street, and they will have five days together, alone. An Eden.

All around him, weary, pale, gaunt-faced young men in battered greatcoats and peaked caps disembark from the train, carrying their army-issue bags. Their eyes, hungry and shadowed, search the crowd, and soon enough come the shrieks of the girls who are clustered, waiting for them; the soldiers’ wan faces light up as they sweep their loves into their arms, bend to kiss them deeply or simply hold them close. Ben watches these reunions with a creeping jealousy.

Minutes pass. The platform begins to clear of its new arrivals; porters escort their first-class guests out to the waiting taxi-line; the next round of passengers push forth and hurry to board the train, and the soldiers walk away with their arms about their girls’ waists. Ben looks all around, walks up and down the boards, scanning for the flash of red hair that he must, somehow, have missed. _Perhaps I got it wrong —_ for a terrifying moment he wonders if Hux was to arrive at Victoria instead —  _or maybe he’s gone right to the rooms; I should go back, see if he’s waiting for me there…_ But he knows, with a knot in the pit of his stomach, that Hux said in his last telegram, _Paddington 10 a.m. 23 Jan._

A lone passenger is among the last to leave the train, walking briskly despite his age: he’s a portly older man in a rumpled suit, briefcase in hand, _The Times_ folded under his arm and a frown upon his ruddy face. Ben grabs his arm as he passes him on the platform, and asks the startled man, “Excuse me, sir — this was the ten a.m. from Dover?”

The man nods, irritated at having been stopped. He glances up and down Ben’s form, noticing that he’s not in uniform — checking for wounds, Ben knows — and then gives him the disapproving glare he’s come to know so well by now, the one that means _Why aren’t you in khaki, young man?_

“Yes,” the businessman says gruffly. “Good day to you.” And he takes off again, huffing slightly and clamping a hand to his hat as he goes.

The train from Dover blows its whistle, and then, puffing steam, its wheels churning with a noise like the roar of the ocean, chugs out of the station again. Ben stares after it, and all too soon it is gone. Hux is not here.

Ben is at a loss. He glances about, sees the Western Union booth —  _Perhaps I’ll send a telegram?_

But no, he thinks; most likely he has got the time wrong after all, or else Hux missed the first train; and if he sends a telegram it’ll never get there in time. _That’s it,_ he decides, trying not to succumb to the panic that gnaws at the fringes of his mind. _He missed the first train and he’ll come on the next one. He’ll tell me how sorry he is, when he gets here, and then we’ll go back to our rooms, and he’ll show me._

This is, Ben is now sure, what has happened. He makes up his mind to stay calm, to go back to the grey café and order another mug of dismal tea, and to wait. _He’ll be here. I know he will._

But the eleven-thirty train produces no sign of him, either, half a pot of tea later. After another anxious jaunt up and down the platform, going all the way to each end with no sign of him, Ben finds a frown set deep upon his face, and a growing tide of fear in his gut. _What if he couldn’t get leave after all, and couldn’t tell me in time? What if something happened at the front before he left — what if he was injured? What if he was…_

He won’t allow himself to think that awful word. He shakes his head, firmly, and must look wild in doing so, for a plump brunette clinging to her sallow soldier’s arm gives him a frightened look as he passes them with long harried strides. _Enough. He’s missed the next train, too. He’ll come this afternoon._

He thinks again of sending a telegram, just in case — he has plenty of change from the café — but again decides against it. Instead of going back for more tea, Ben leans against a dusty wall and rummages in his coat for a pack of cigarettes. He doesn’t normally smoke, but he snagged these in jest from Hux’s jacket one day this summer and never returned them to him; they ended up in his things at Oxford, and when he packed to come to London, they came with him too. He lights one and takes a deep pull, feeling his nerves steadying.

He smokes half the pack over the next two hours, his eyes never leaving the track. Two more trains from Dover come and go, and Hux is not on either one of them. Near three o’clock, when the cigarettes have begun to reverse their calming effect — Ben’s head aches and his throat is feeling raw from the smoke; he is so shaken he feels he will be sick —  _Where is he? —_ he finally gives up. _Just for now._ He’ll go back to their rooms, sleep a little while, and come back to watch the evening trains.

He leaves a note with the landlady, in case Hux should find his way here while he rests, and then clumps upstairs with a heavy heart. He had been so full of hope this morning, knowing that the next time he went up these stairs Hux would be behind him; but now...

Ben goes into the bedroom, shuts the door, and lies down fully clothed, not even bothering to remove his shoes. He stares at the ceiling, his head spinning with nerves, until finally he falls into a hazy, troubled sleep.

It’s dark outside when he wakes. He feels relieved not to have been woken by one of the new air-raid sirens, and not least because his blackout curtain is up, giving full view into his room from the street outside. His head feels foggy, but quickly he remembers his purpose, and thunders downstairs to see if Hux has left a message.

He has not.

Feeling Atlas’ burden in dread settle onto his shoulders, Ben begins the slow trudge back to the station, already lighting another cigarette. He returns to the same post on the platform, and, a miserable sentry, watches more trains come and go and come and go, soldiers scooping up the girls who run delightedly into their arms and holding them as if never to let go. Ben smokes the rest of Hux’s cigarettes, and the station clock turns to eight and nine and ten, and the last train comes — so many fewer passengers, straggling onto the platform with sleep-shadowed eyes and wrinkled, musty clothes, no-one there to meet them now — and still Hux has not come.

Ben is beside himself, now, almost numb with worry. _Now_ he will send a telegram, for something must surely be wrong — but when he looks over he sees the Western Union office is closed, and has been for some hours now. In his stupor he did not even mark it.

Ben buys two more packs of cigarettes, though looking at them makes his gorge rise horribly. He returns home in the biting chill and says nothing when Mrs Laighill asks with concern where he has been all evening. Upstairs, he strips off his clothes (they smell of smoke and coal and the clinging sweat of fear), and puts on a dressing-gown and lights a candle, and sits down to write a letter to Hux.

_23 January_

_Hux,_

_I waited all day at the station. The landlady said you hadn’t come. Where are you? Is everything all right?_

He hesitates a moment, so worn-down by his worries that he nearly adds, like some poor lovesick girl, _If you didn’t want to see me after all, you should have said so, instead of tormenting me like this…_ But he stops his pen before it can form the pathetic, whingeing words.

He continues.

_I’ll wait again tomorrow, starting 7 a.m. If this letter reaches you before I see you, please tell me what’s happened and where you are. Is there somewhere else I should meet you? I have money. I’ll go anywhere._

This last, he thinks, is too much — too desperate — but it is written in ink, he cannot change it. He bites his lip and then signs the note with only the usual _B._

He finds an envelope, addresses it care of Hux’s battalion, and slips the note under the door for the landlady to collect and post in the morning, when she brings him his cup of tea. (He had missed it, yesterday, already having left for the station, but found it cooled and placid outside the door when he returned, and it made his chest ache to see it.) For now, though, there is no sense waiting up; the last train has come and gone. He will not be here tonight.

Ben blows out his candle, tugs the blackout curtain down, and climbs between the well-washed, pilling sheets. He stares at the expanse of the bed that he had hoped —  _known —_ he would be sharing with Hux tonight. His eyes prickle hot, with anger and fear; he squeezes them shut and feels unbidden tears snake down his cheeks.

_Where is he? Where are you?_

 

* * *

 

He repeats the same routine the next day. He thinks, starting on his fifth cigarette just as the eleven-thirty train is leaving, that he knows now how Sisyphus felt. His hands shake as he lights another, and another, and still one more; and the hours pass and the wind blows colder and Hux is not here, not here, not here.

He returns to the café for dinner and tea, and again later for supper. Their meat is as grey as their tea and the evening waitress, the same as yesterday’s, looks at him strangely as he hands over his coins, his fingertips yellow-stained. He relieves himself in the filthy station washroom and winces at his pallor, his hair lank and greasy in the mirror; and then he takes up his vigil again.

At eleven o’clock that night he goes home alone. He finds Mrs Laighill dozing in her armchair in the parlour, a novel open on her lap, and wakes her rather roughly to ask if she has heard from him; her eyes are wide as she shakes her head, rapidly, no. Ben curses, making her wince, and then stamps upstairs and throws himself into bed.

 _He’ll be here tomorrow,_ he thinks, willing the screaming worries in his head to quiet themselves for the night.

 _If he isn’t wounded. If his leave hasn’t been cancelled. If his train wasn’t derailed by German spies,_ a nasty voice inside his head reminds him.

 _I know,_ Ben thinks. _I know._ He rolls over and pulls a pillow over his ears.

They have lost three full days of Hux’s leave by the next morning. Ben wakes and realises this, bleakly, as he washes with cold water and dresses in the same dirty clothes without noticing that he does: he is, unconsciously, saving the fresh ones for when Hux is here. He would make do with mere hours, by this point, if it meant Hux were to come at all; but all the same he mourns those days, the time that they could have spent in each other’s arms, making up for lost days and weeks and months.

 _If he’s even still alive,_ comes the vicious reminder, like clockwork. Ben lights a cigarette and thinks dully, _If, if, if._

Another day drags on and on. Ben has become no more than a spectre, some dark shadow-creature lurking on heaven’s fringes, watching the work-worn and weary faces of those in the crowd being transformed by the sight of the ones that they love. The munitions girls — their yellowed skin blushes sweetly as anyone’s when their soldier beaux kiss them; and even the most hard-faced of men in uniform, waiting to be shipped back to the front, break into a smile when they see them, these young couples in love, an air of hope clinging fiercely to them despite everything. Ben stands apart, alone.

Through the glass roof of the station Ben sees it growing dark. Fat flakes of snow whirl to the ground from a heavily-clouded sky; _at least there won’t be a raid tonight._ He is thinking of giving up early — and then doing what; throwing himself into the Thames, mayhap — when the nine-thirty train comes screeching into the station, nearly half an hour late. Around Ben, anxious faces relax with laughter, _oh, whatever were we worried for —_ and for the dozenth time today the doors are opened and the passengers flow down to the platform to meet their loved ones below. Despite himself, Ben lingers, unable to tear his eyes away from the repeating scenes which hurt him so.

He thanks God he lingers, for at long last, days late, he sees him.

Hux disembarks from a second-class car, his shoulders tense beneath his Burberry, his cap in place. His grip is tight on the handle of his bag and he looks around him as if scouting for enemy fire. Ben’s knees go weak with relief, and it is a moment before he finds his voice to call, hoarse and desperate, _“Hux! Hux!”_

Hux’s head whips sharply to the sound of his name. As the crowd clears between them, Ben takes short quick strides toward him, barely restraining himself from running. He all but shoves the straggling passengers out of his way as Hux moves to meet him, and then finally he is there, close enough to touch. Ben restrains himself from seizing him, pulling him into his arms; he could weep with his nearness, with his being _alive._ They are not safe here, though — they are not alone — so he settles on, “You’re here,” half-breathless with near-grief.

Hux nods tightly. His gaze darts about, flicking over the crowd, hardly seeing Ben. “Let’s go,” he says, clipped, and Ben is taken aback, almost instantly deflated — but he cannot speak up before Hux has set off towards the exit, walking fast, blazing a path through the remaining people on the platform. Ben’s protest dies on his lips as he hurries after him, the heavy dread returning to his so-briefly-lightened heart.

Outside the station, in the brisk dark night, Hux asks, still in that same terse tone, “Where are we going?”

Ben directs him, down the street and to the east, through the back-alley shortcut and finally to Mrs Laighill’s door. He dares not speak a word except to give guidance, cowed by Hux’s fearsome silence, the strange aura about him. But finally they are inside, and they greet the landlady quickly — she seems relieved that Ben has finally come home with something to show for his troubles — and then, as he’d imagined doing days ago, Ben leads Hux upstairs to their rooms.

They ignore the other, still-locked door and go straight into Ben’s room. Hux pushes through first, and Ben shuts the door behind them, and eagerly turns round and makes to take Hux in his arms, a smile breaking over his face at last: _you’re here, you’re here —_

But Hux has set down his case (it’s not his, Ben notes, not the fine luggage with which he’d set out all those months ago for Shorncliffe; this bag must be something of the army’s, and Ben wonders what happened to those calfskin cases, what state they are in now), and sunk, exhausted, into the chair by the fireside. The low flames cast eerie shadows on his face. He exhales a long breath and then asks, his voice rough, “Do you have a light?”

Wordlessly Ben fumbles for a fag and matches, almost dropping them when he hands them to him; Hux lights the cigarette and takes a deep, drawn-out pull. The cherry flares. Again Ben is tormented by this unexpected silence — the need to touch him grows stronger, having him _here —_ but still he holds his tongue, feeling that only Hux has the right to speak.

And finally he does. He smokes the cigarette nearly down to his fingertips and throws the butt into the grate; and then at last he turns to Ben, and his face seems more his own again. His eyes have a light in them that was not there at the station — but still it is dull. He has the look of all the soldiers: young men’s bodies with old men’s souls.

 “I’m sorry,” Hux says, finally. “God, Ben, I’m so sorry.”

“What happened?” Ben asks tentatively, now he has permission. “Did you get my letter?”

Hux shakes his head. “I was supposed to leave France on the evening of the twenty-second and arrive here the next morning,” he says. “But that morning, my CO was killed. Bad luck, and the worst of timing.”

Ben’s eyes widen. “I’m so sorry,” he says, inadequately. “Did — did you know him well?”

Hux nods, short. “He’d been with us from the beginning. He was a good man. Upright, honest fellow, the sort you want taking charge. His name was Fairley. We were almost — friends.” His mouth twists. “A shell in our trench. He’d only been in command for a fortnight. And it wasn’t just him. That same night, half a platoon was killed on a raid; the newest ones, fresh from Cambridge. It was their first time over the top.”

Ben flinches, at this. Hux doesn’t seem to notice. He carries on, doggedly:

“When we lost Fairley, I got promoted. I’m a major at last,” he says without emotion, gesturing to his epaulette, “and in command of the company, now. The whole damned thing. And as such, it fell to me — after the smoke had cleared that night — to write all the letters telling the families that their boys were dead.” There is a bitter hardness in his voice. “I was supposed to be on my way to Dover, and then to London and to you; and instead I spent a sleepless night playing Grim Reaper’s telegram boy.” He gives a long, drawn-out sigh. “I couldn’t get word to you in time; I’m lucky they still let me go at all.”

“Congratulations,” Ben says, gesturing uselessly to the new insignia he wears. “And you’re not even twenty-five.”

Hux winces as if tasting something foul. “I’d rather not have done it. Not like this.”

“How — how is it, though?” Ben asks, timorous. “Out there? Is it — any better than it was?” He remembers Hux in October, telling them his stories with a kind of hard cold pride, making Rey squeal and Ben squirm at the tales of sleeping in corpse-mud, picking shrapnel from one’s breakfast.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk any more about the war,” Hux says, sharply, and the mood in the room suddenly shifts. “Come here,” he tells Ben, and for the first time Ben can truly picture him in the trenches, shouting orders to his men on the battlefield. The image sends a shiver down his spine. “Kiss me.”

 _Finally._ Ben goes to him and takes his face between his hands; Hux closes his eyes and opens his mouth, and Ben kisses him deep and eager, sating himself like a parched man. Hux’s hands move to the buttons of Ben’s shirt. He undoes them himself in a flurry, and Hux stands from his chair and strips off his trench-coat and tunic and shirt, and they are soon both bare-chested, skin hot on skin when they kiss.

Ben’s hands roam, and find raised bumps and scars and bruises, scrapes and small cuts where there had only been smooth skin before. Although mercifully Hux has not been seriously injured, the war has left its mark on him all the same. Ben feels intensely possessive of what unblemished skin there is left — the last trace of him _before —_ and prays that these minor wounds will be the only ones Hux sees.

Sensing his distraction, Hux kisses him harder, presses his hips into his: “I want you,” he murmurs. “I want to be inside you again. It’s been so damned long.”

Ben shivers. “There’s been no one else?” he asks quietly. “Since — last time?”

Hux shakes his head. “The men go down to the brothels when we’re in billets. I make my excuses and stay behind.”

“But surely, in your battalion — in the army, there must be other men…like you?” Ben asks. “Like us?” He has often wondered; has had no way to ask.

Something flickers in Hux’s eyes. “Yes,” he says almost harshly, “but not — I don’t want them. I want you.”

Ben accepts this, and asks no more. They get into bed, and Hux says, “Did you bring —?”, and Ben nods, hurries to open the drawer where he has secreted (next to a Bible placed there by Mrs Laighill) a jar of petroleum-jelly.

He finds it and unscrews the lid, and then gets on his back and dips his fingers and begins to probe carefully at his opening — it has been a long time since he’s taken Hux, and he doubts his own fingers in the meantime will have prepared him enough. But his body knows the routine, and soon he has stretched himself ready, his cock resting heavy and full on his stomach. Hux kneels over him, his eyes dark.

“Ready,” Ben says to him, and the word has hardly left his lips before Hux is inside him. He gasps.

Hux fucks him slowly at first, savouring it, the tight heat that he has missed and dreamed of — has tried and failed to imitate, in the cold hard bunks of the officers’ dugouts or the more forgiving beds of billets, with his hand on his cock under the covers and the grunts and snores of the other men all around him — for months now, for a lifetime. He breathes deeply as he thrusts further into Ben; he enters him fully with a harsh exhalation, and Ben moans, long and low.

“Hush,” Hux tells him, and draws himself out again. He fucks him quicker now, slowly building up his speed, and Ben’s teeth sink into his bottom lip; his brows furrow and his eyes dart beneath closed lids as he fights not to shout with the feeling of it. His legs come up to lock around Hux’s waist, bringing him still deeper inside, and Ben feels light-headed, his synapses flooding. The dark enfolds them, drapes over their naked skin.

They are silent the whole way through, both too conscious of Mrs Laighill’s room below, separated from them only by thin walls. Ben sweats with the exertion of keeping himself quiet, and Hux’s face is determined, swimming like another moon in the hazy dark above him.

As he fucks him, Hux’s thoughts unravel. In the blackness, he cannot see the room around them; a draught blows in through the crack of the window; he could be back in France, beneath the cruel and careless stars. His trench-dreams come to life; he looks down at Ben’s contorted face beneath him and he sees again the German boy he’d killed, his dark hair close-shorn but thick as Ben’s, even that mole on the left cheek. How he’d bled when Hux had thrust the bayonet between his ribs. How he had screamed, and then all at once gone silent. He’d been a pretty thing, and Hux had killed him. He had felt his blood on his hands.

He speeds up his thrusts. Ben, beneath him, gasps at the change in rhythm; Hux fucks him hard; it hurts, he has grown unaccustomed, but he does not bid him stop. Something has changed in Hux’s eyes, there is a fire there; Ben knows, somehow, that he must let it burn its way out, even if it scorches him on the way. He bites his lip and stays quiet, quiet, as Hux comes inside him, his nails digging hard into Ben’s legs around his waist; and then Ben comes too, one choking sigh escaping his lips.

Hux, when he pulls out of him, seems still not to be all there. Ben wipes himself clean and then lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, feeling raw between his legs. He aches. He closes his eyes.

Hux comes back to bed. “Did I hurt you?” he asks. He climbs under the covers beside Ben. Unconsciously, Ben shifts away from him. Hux notices.

Ben shakes his head. “No.”

He is lying: they both know it.

They fall asleep not touching. Outside, the stars are cold.

In the middle of the night Hux startles awake, thinking he’d heard something — the _rat-a-tat_ of archie, the caterwauling of shells. He curses, half-blind still with sleep, and fumbles around him for a revolver; he is still in the trench, a bombardment has started and they must go now over the top, where is his gun, where is my _gun,_ he thinks he says aloud — but Ben, awoken too, leans over him in the dark and lays a hand on his arm and says, frightened, “Hux. _Hux._ It’s me, you’re in London, you’re safe.”

Hux stops his frantic searching. “Ben,” he murmurs, low, coming back to himself. “Ben. I —”

“Don’t speak,” Ben says, and kisses him, terribly afraid.

They fuck again — this time Hux climbs atop Ben to take what he wants, to ride him — he has never let Ben inside him before, he has so rarely done this with any other lover. But tonight, in the empty dark, he allows himself to give in, to take by being taken. Ben’s eyes are wide as Hux sinks down on him: he exhales, a broken little sound, and Hux feels himself split open on his cock and coming alive again, waking from a sleep-walk.

When they finish — it’s Hux who breaks the silence this time, allows himself one roughly-whispered oath — neither of them can get back to sleep. They clean themselves and Ben lights two cigarettes. They lie back and say nothing, dreading the slow lightening of the sky. Everything will be real again in the morning.

“We still have two days,” Ben says.

“Two days. We should’ve had three more.”

“Two days is something. Better than none.”

“Two days and I go back. Straight back to hell,” Hux says bitterly.

“Surely it’s not as bad as that,” Ben ventures, cautious.

“No, Ben, it’s worse,” Hux retorts, his temper flaring quick to life. “It’s worse than you could ever imagine.”

“From your letters and all —” Ben begins defensively, but Hux cuts him off:

“Letters are _nothing._ There are no words to describe it, the — the horror. And don’t you think that maybe I don’t tell you everything? That I can’t? The censors, yes, but there are other things — I try to put what I’ve seen, what I’ve _done,_ into words — just to try and get it out — but I _can’t._ It’s too big. Too awful.” Hux stubs out his cigarette, viciously, and glances at Ben. “You don’t understand. You can’t.”

The subtle accusation in his tone riles Ben. He sits up on one elbow and returns Hux’s glare: “You know I tried to go!” he protests. “You know I’d be there with you if I could! That’s not _fair,_ Hux _. They didn’t let me join up.”_

“All the same.” Hux looks away from him.

“No, Hux, it’s _not,”_ Ben fires back, months of repressed anger and anguish bursting out at last. “You don’t see the looks I get at school! You don’t see what they say, what they _do!_   I’m an able-bodied young man, nothing wrong with me that they can see — they don’t even know about _this —_ ” an angry gesture to the two of them, together — “and thank God, for they’d have my head twice over if they did, although at least it gives me a _reason!”_

“You have a reason,” Hux says quietly, but something dangerous simmers beneath his calm tone. “You’re not a citizen. I know. And you’re _lucky,_ Ben. I told you at the start, and you’ve no idea how much more I mean it now. It’s nothing like we thought — it’s nothing like they said it would be. Home by _Christmas…_ no-one had any idea. Any one of my men would kill to be where you are.”

“Then don’t make me feel guilty for it,” Ben hisses.

“I’m doing nothing of the sort!”

“You _are,_ and so’s the whole damned rest of the country.” Ben’s jaw is set, he is near trembling with rage. “I don’t _care_ how bad it is out there, it can’t be worse than here — stuck at Oxford with the old men and the cripples, the men the army didn’t _want,_ and all of us knowing full well that I _could_ fight, that I _should!_ And every day, reading the paper, opening to the lists with the most awful dread in my heart, looking down the names and _praying_ not to see yours — and every day thanking God when I don’t, but knowing it’s only a matter of time…picturing you half-dead in a trench somewhere in France, being _shot at,_ at all hours of the day and night, while I take my meals in the dining-hall and ruminate on Voltaire!”

“It is worse,” Hux says bluntly. “It’s the worst thing humanity has ever come up with, and it spares no-one — nothing that mattered outside, mattered before _,_ matters there, matters now — your class, your name, your age, your looks _…_ It’s a meat-grinder, pulling in men in the prime of their lives and leaving nothing but mud filled with corpses behind.”

He looks at Ben; in the dim pre-dawn light his face is ghostly pale. He looks a stranger. “We had a copy of _Candide_ in the trench, up by Armentières. One of my men had a few monologues memorised; he liked to recite them after supper, keep us entertained. He kept the book on him, in his pocket. When he was killed I was tasked with stripping his body, and I found it. The pages were all stuck together with his blood. You couldn’t read a single word.”

Ben stares at him for a long, long moment; and then finally he bows his head. After a moment he looks up again and reaches for Hux. Their lips meet like tinder and flint. They fuck a third time, and if Ben’s face is wet as Hux drives, hard, into him, neither of them acknowledge it.

They drift off again as the sun comes up. For the first time in months, Hux sleeps without dreams.

 

* * *

 

Two more days in London before Hux has to go back. That first morning, they sleep late, wake to rain; Hux, when he awakes, is disoriented and tense, knowing he is supposed to be doing something; he has slept through the attack, he has failed his men. He reaches for his boots, for his clothes — why did he sleep without them, what kind of a fool — and only stops when he sees Ben’s sleeping form in the bed beside him, curled into himself as if to ward off blows. It doesn’t make him feel better.

They eat a late breakfast at a café down the street; the weather is miserable, the patrons are too. They hardly speak. Ben tries to think of all the things he’d thought he’d say to Hux when they were finally reunited, and cannot recall a single one. Not about school, nor the war. Not about them. There is nothing to say.

Back to their rooms after eating. Hux wants to take a walk; when Ben offers to go with him, he tells him he’ll be fine, and disappears into the storm. Ben sits by the fire, staring into it until all the embers have died; he feels frozen solid, like he may never move again. He puts his fingers to one wrist to be sure he has a pulse. He wishes he were dreaming because even in his nightmares Hux has never been like this.

In the summer Hux had told him he’d take him to London one day. Art galleries, museums: Ben had imagined it with bliss for nights on end, Hux the confident guide, leading him around the city and his own past, letting Ben further inside. Instead he has this silent stranger, who when Ben asks, “The V&A?”, gives him only a blank stare as if he has started speaking in another tongue. Hux looks at Ben as if he is looking at someone else.

When Ben goes to kiss him, tentatively, after supper that night, only then does he respond. They undress one another, their touches are familiar, memories of a better time — but this, what they do now, could not, by anyone, be called _making love._ They hurt one another. After, Ben lies awake.

_How did it all go so wrong?_

He sees Hux off at Paddington Station. They do not embrace on the platform. “I love you,” Ben says, low, beneath the belch of the steam-engine and the chatter of the crowds. “I love you, Hux.” A last effort — desperate, pitiful, made worse because it’s still the truth.

Hux looks him in the eyes. His hand is tight on the strap of the kit-bag over his shoulder. He nods, shallow, twice. For a moment it looks like he will cry.

“Goodbye, Ben.” His voice is rough. He turns away.

The khaki sea pulls him under, leaving Ben adrift.

 

* * *

 

Finally the Ninth Squadron has begun to engage in combat. The Germans have gained territory, encroaching on their airfield at Saint-Omer, and the men step up eagerly to defend it. On the morning of 30 January, Poe and his men assemble in the mess before breakfast, crowding round the board where their squadron orders are posted.

 _O.P. Pow-wow 8.0. Lines 9.0 – 10.30,_ reads the board. Next come those pilots and their accompanying observers who’ll be flying this morning’s offensive patrol. Poe scans over the list of names, being jostled by the other men, who soon call to one another and disperse in groups, either racing to the hangar or ambling away with a slight stoop to their shoulders. No matter the danger, all of them are here to fly.

Poe’s own name is not on the list, nor did he expect it to be — his second, Wexley, has been flying as leader these last few days, to ensure he’ll be able to take over if anything happens to Poe. Poe has still dressed to go up, just in case, however: wrapped-up warmly in his thick woollen jumper and sheepskin-lined flight jacket, his silk scarf tied snugly round his neck for the chilly walk from barracks to mess.

And it soon turns out well that he has, for one name that _is_ on the list shouldn’t be.

Wexley appears at Poe’s shoulder. He’s noticed the error, too. “Miller’s still in hospital. They’ve got it wrong.”

Edward Miller was wounded last week when he was forced to crash on their side of the lines by a pair of Huns dogging his tail. They’d luckily given up and headed home when the plane had touched the ground, and Miller had escaped, somehow, with only a fractured wrist for his troubles; but he will still be out of commission for a few days yet.

Poe makes his decision quickly. “You’ll fly for him, and I’ll take the lead again. Sorry to steal your glory, Snap.” He winks. “Let me fetch B.B. Meet you at the major’s.”

“Yes, sir!” Wexley grins.

Poe pushes his way through the remains of the crowd to enter the mess proper. He strides along the rows of tables searching for that beacon of red hair, and soon finds it, at the table which the observers of his squadron perennially occupy. Albert Baker is eating his porridge, looking half-asleep as his comrades chatter on around him, but his head jerks up when Poe calls, “B.B!”

“S.C. Dameron,” the younger man replies, startled, grinning roguishly when he sees him. “What is it? We’re not flying this morning, I checked —”

“We are now,” Poe cuts him off, returning his grin. The familiar pre-flight excitement is already sparkling through his veins. “They got orders wrong, forgot Miller was still out. Snap’s flying for him. Come on.”

B.B. looks as delighted as Poe feels. He abandons his porridge at once, pushing back his chair with an enthusiastic scrape. “See you later, lads!” he crows to his friends, most of whom groan in jealousy. “Off to kill some Huns for you!”

He and Poe jog out of the mess and reach the major’s office, meeting up with the rest of the squadron. Brief greetings are exchanged, inquiries about the absent Miller’s wellbeing made, and then the klaxon sounds, calling the lot of them inside. Major Raddus is a jowly, jovial man, entirely bald, and in possession of a gravelly, thickly-accented voice which often sounds as if he is speaking from underwater. His men, however, understand him perfectly by now, and all adore him besides.

“Good morning, gentlemen!” Raddus now greets them. He begins to call the roll: “Ames; Baker; Blakely; Clifton; Coxswain; Dameron.”

“Here, sir,” Poe answers.

“Fenton; Hampton; Hart; Jameson; Joseph; MacArthur; Mitchells; O’Connor…”

Raddus continues, up to “Wexley” and “Witte,” until all nine pilots and their observers have been accounted for. He then moves on to assigning formation groupings, beginning with Poe, the squadron commander.

“Dameron and Baker, two streamers on your tail.”

“Yes, sir,” Poe affirms, with Alfred chiming in heartily.

“Mitchells and Coxswain to the right, Wexley and Ames to the left. O’Connor and Fenton, streamer on your right strut. Blakely and Hampton on the right, Witte and MacArthur on the left.” Raddus runs through the remaining pairs’ formations, and then, as if kicked into action by a starting-gun, all eighteen men break for the aerodrome, eager to be off.

Out on the runway, Poe climbs happily into his Camel — not _as_ happily as if she were his own kite at home, but with a thrill all the same: a thrill that never goes away, no matter how many times he does this. B.B. swings up into the seat behind him, where they face back-to-back, and reaches for his Lewis gun as soon as he’s strapped-in. He fires his testing-rounds with a young man’s abandon —  _rat-a-tat-a-tat —_ as Poe scans over his instruments, and then stops, reluctantly, turning instead to look over his maps and spare parts, when Poe reminds him, “Save some for Jerry.”

Everything is in order. The morning sky is white-blue, last night’s heavy mist burning off under the sun that winks from the snow. They’ll need the shade of their goggles for certain, but all in all, Poe thinks, it’s a fine day for flying _._ The good visibility will be good for the Germans, too, and potentially increase the risk to their own men; but Poe’s squadron is eminently capable, and seems to be blessed with luck, besides. Even having flown in the most wretched of weather throughout this winter, and having been subjected to several particularly aggressive Huns and their Fokkers — such as those responsible for Miller’s hospital stay — they have not yet lost a man. _And we don’t plan to lose one today._

Poe starts his engine, grinning in pure contentment when the machine rumbles to life. He pulls his goggles down over his eyes, dulling the glare from the snow, and waits for the signal from the ground crew. When it comes, Poe takes off first, followed quickly by the rest of his men.

“All right, B.B.?” Poe calls teasingly back to his observer as they make their ascent. On his first day, Albert had turned a remarkable shade of pea-green during take-off; and while he _had_ maintained an admirable hold on the contents of his stomach, Poe has still not ceased to tease him for it.

B.B. groans — “Sod off, Dameron” — and makes a rude gesture in Poe’s peripheral vision.

Poe laughs — this is practically a routine, by now — and pulls the throttle back to bring them higher, higher still, waiting for the rest of the squadron to meet them at forty-five hundred feet. Once they are assembled, at Poe’s nod, B.B. fires the red Very light cueing them all to form up.

They do so smoothly. Poe leads Blakely and Witte, two newer pilots who have nonetheless proved themselves quick learners, and keen; he knows he won’t need to worry about them if a combat situation should arise, and is thankful for this. He greets them with a tip of his wing as they form up, and then they are off, the rest of the men following Poe’s formation out and over the sweeping, snow-covered fields of France.

The white terrain is soon interrupted by the black cluster of a forest. It quickly becomes apparent that its trees conceal anti-aircraft guns, for almost as soon as it comes into view, those manning the guns on the ground must see the squadron also. A volley of bullets spews up, accompanied by much billowing smoke, but Poe pays it no mind: archie almost never hits its target, the rounds petering out far too low and tumbling harmlessly back to earth. They soar on, past the forest, leaving the guns stuttering uselessly behind them.

At Poe’s direction, the other two flights — six kites in groups of three, led by Snap Wexley and Tom Mitchells — disperse, one to the east and one to the west, to fly out over enemy lines and recce as well as they can. This is an offensive patrol, so they’ll strafe targets as need be, but Poe hopes that they’ll also return with some intelligence; the conditions today are ideal for photography. Mitchells and Wexley salute him with wing-waggles, and their flights soar off, leaving Poe, with Blakely and Witte, to keep on northwards.

Their flight is uninterrupted for some time. Poe revels in flying with no pressure to attack, enjoying the clean expanse of sky all around him, the familiar droning hum and rattle of the engine. He loves nothing more than soaring through the sky, above even the clouds, with houses and farms like a child’s toys below him, the people smaller than ants; they fly over battlefields, sometimes, and even the war looks small from here. He would never think to blaspheme, but Poe has often thought that God must feel like this. He has God’s view, up here; this is the closest he has ever come to finding heaven on earth, but for in Rey’s and Finn’s arms.

B.B., behind him, equally happy to be in the sky, amuses himself with firing off several rounds, and Poe lets him. From either side of them come identical lazy volleys: the other observers, Hampton and MacArthur, answering in kind. Poe smiles. They are a special breed, pilots — happiest when their feet don’t touch the ground, when they have no earthly tether. They understand one another, their bone-deep yearning to be free, undampened even by the dangers bound, inextricably, to an aviator’s life; and there is nothing more like freedom than an empty sky and wings.

But the empty sky does not stay empty much longer. In the distance, Poe spots the dark shapes of several German aircraft, approaching far too quickly for his liking. Almost as soon as he has seen them, they streak upwards and eastwards, quickly placing themselves between Poe’s flight and the sun: a tactical advantage.

Poe frowns, his sense of leisure dissipating. “B.B.,” he warns him, but his observer has already seen. He fires another red light, to indicate intention to attack, and Poe climbs higher to meet the Huns. Blakely and Witte quickly follow.

The Germans are close, now, close enough for Poe to make out the Maltese crosses painted on the Fokkers’ and Pfalzes’ fuselage. They look ever more sinister as they approach and come into clearer view. “Get ready,” Poe says aloud to Albert — and as quickly as that, the dogfight begins.

The Huns dive on them, having gained the barest height advantage, but Poe reacts quickly, and pulls up and out of their path. Thinking fast, unwilling to dive on them in kind, he reaches for his gun. Putting his eye to the sight, he spots a Pfalz hovering below and to the left of him, and lines up a shot and pulls the trigger — but after a few rounds that miss the Hun, the gun jams.

“Christ,” Poe swears under his breath. There is a Fokker quickly gaining on their tail, which both Blakeley and Witte are too far away to deflect, and would be even if they were not engaged with their own Boches already. “B.B., will you try —”

“On it, sir.” Albert fires off several rounds from the Lewis gun, some of which succeed in perforating the stretched-cloth wings of the German plane, but don’t do any serious damage. He, too, curses as the Hun swoops away, intact enough to return to his airfield for repairs.

Poe clenches his jaw, holding tight to the throttle and vigilantly scanning the sky ahead for more aircraft. His objective, now, should be to get them back to their own hangar, for they’ll have a hell of a time with only one working gun; and the appearance of any more Huns will not help their progress back. Luckily, none are forthcoming, but he does not let his guard down — and it is well that he doesn’t, for suddenly one of the Jerries who had been occupied with Blakely, apparently unsatisfied with the fight he found there, now swoops down and fires at Poe’s tail.

B.B. reacts immediately, aiming the Lewis and spewing off a round, and then another. But the Hun angles himself sharply out of the way of the fire, and when Poe urges Albert, “More, go on,” the younger man shakes his head grimly.

“Striker’s stuck. Can’t.”

Poe curses again. They carry no spare striker. Neither gun on board is now functional.

The Hun’s brothers, seeing that Poe and B.B. have ceased to retaliate, converge on them.

In the tight space of the cockpit, Poe is beginning to sweat. He shucks off his scarf and jacket, but it doesn’t help. He can hear Albert’s quickened, almost-panting breaths. Fear grips Poe’s chest; he wills himself to remain level-headed. From their own planes, Hampton and MacArthur are signalling frantically — they are out of ammunition, they cannot intervene. Poe recalls the rounds first fired in boredom with a feeling of sickness now. They are too far away from the others of their squadron to rely on them for assistance.

“Poe,” B.B. turns around in his seat to say, uncharacteristically quietly, “I’m scared.”

“I know, B.B. I know.”

All six Boche planes are now upon them. Things have gone wrong so quickly: Poe cannot even start to pray. The first Hun begins to fire, and the others soon join in, round after round after round; the grimmest chorus, rending the crisp winter air. The sound fills Poe’s ears, but still he can sense when Albert begins to cry.

Their wings and body have been peppered; their Camel lists and lurches from side-to-side, falling fast. Poe can see smoke and fire outside his window. The sky outside is so blue, now, the last of the clouds swept away.

They plunge into a nose-dive. There is no coming out of it: the throttle is useless with the engine in flames. B.B. is sobbing openly, now, and Poe, numb, feels his own cheeks wet. He thinks of his mother, his father, how sorry he is. _They never wanted me to go._

He closes his eyes. The wind shrieks horribly outside the cockpit as they fall, a banshee’s screaming. They are spinning, now, spiralling inexorably towards the cold, pitiless earth. He thinks of Rey, of his Rey, who now will never be his wife — and of Finn, their Finn; the best man he’s ever known, the best man he’s ever loved. _To see them only one more time. To hold them again._ His heart swells, anguished, with love for them, with sorrow.

_He promised to take care of her. He promised me that._

The white ground is coming up, so fast, to meet them. The battered plane makes impact. Poe Dameron thinks no more.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hux would indeed historically be wearing a Burberry trench-coat, which I'm sure you knew already if you've witnessed the gift that is Domhnall in [The Tale of Thomas Burberry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D5IZtDCS5c). Walter Noble's memoir, [With a Bristol Fighter Squadron](https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/With_a_Bristol_Fighter_Squadron.html?id=ZblBAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y), was instrumental to Poe's time with the RFC; the flying scenes couldn't have been done without it, nor without [Gefionne](http://https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gefionne)'s well-trained eye. (I'm sorry they ended the way they did, really, I am.)
> 
> Come shout at me on [Tumblr](http://huxes.tumblr.com). ;)


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If grieving and/or pregnancy don't sit well with you, a fair bit of this chapter might not be for you. (Nothing heavier than that this week, though, for once!)

* * *

 

They do not know anything is amiss until they get the telegram.

Sunday, February seventh, a full week after his death — but they don’t know that, yet. Rey has been thinking that perhaps the post has been held up this week, it can be so variable; she is more concerned with getting things ready for her newest cabal of wounded soldiers, arriving later this afternoon. Those who are already here have been afflicted with a bout of influenza, and she’s been busy trying to keep that under control, too; she’s fallen ill herself, waking mornings with a nauseous feeling, but persisting determinedly in all her duties nonetheless. 

Finn, for his part, is drained by his rehabilitation exercises, frustrated with his own useless arm and the endless process of bringing it back to life. No-one has had time to worry any more than they usually do. Rey’s long-held theory, that she would sense at once if anything ever happened to either of her boys, finally proves itself wrong. 

The doorbell rings that day after mass. Cecil opens the door, his eyes harried, expecting to find the new nurses being sent up from the village — but instead there is little William with his bicycle and cap, extending an envelope in silence.

The butler thanks him quietly and hands him his coins, already knowing. When the door has closed, he stands there, preparing himself to deliver the dreaded missive to his mistress — but before he can do so, the sound of light footsteps is heard:

“I thought that was the door,” Rey says gaily from behind him. Finn follows her; they have been working on his arm, and his face is tight with stress. “Did the post come at last?”

Cecil turns to her slowly. “Miss Aurelia,” he begins, but already Rey has seen his face. She stops in her tracks, and then snatches the envelope from him, visibly paling. 

With trembling hands she opens the telegram. Her eyes scan desperately over the few short lines and then she gives a cry as if the air has been punched from her lungs. 

“He’s gone,” Rey whispers, and the black-edged yellow paper falls from her hands.

She stumbles back, clutching at the banister to keep herself upright, and a keening cry escapes her throat, her eyes squeezing painfully shut. Finn hears his heartbeat pounding in his ears; the world seems to spin around him. Rey sobs, a broken wail: _No. No. No._

Finn picks up the dropped telegram. His eyes can barely focus, but he reads:

BE PROUD OF CAPTAIN POE DAMERON RFC WHO HAS DIED A BRAVE MAN 30 JANUARY.

Footsteps, running. Leia appears, followed shortly by her brother, and then Ben too comes racing down the stairs, his face transfigured in awful fear. Finn knows what he’s thinking — he can see the traitorous relief in Ben’s eyes when he takes in the scene, understands at once that it is not the earl’s son they mourn for. 

Finn stares hard at him, and sees guilt flash across the younger man’s face; and then Ben looks away. Luke and Leia surround Finn and Rey, murmuring meaningless words. Rey beats her fists on her father’s back: “No, no,” she is sobbing, “not him. Not Poe. We were to be married. Please. Please, no.”

She is swaying on her feet, even supported by her father; now she pushes him and Leia away, her face contorted in grief and rage. Finn goes to her, and holds out his arms; Rey crumples into him. She throws her arms around his neck to bury her head in his shoulder. Finn holds her, carefully, as she sobs. Her hair smells sweet, like the flowers on the moors in May, all dead now.

He closes his eyes and thinks of Poe’s smile; violets in his hand and his kiss on Finn’s lips. Gone, all of it — and the summer, and their golden youth with it.

 

* * *

 

Rey has missed her monthly courses several times since the war began and the house was taken over. They have always been irregular, and besides, there is stress to consider: she is under enormous amounts of pressure, not eating well, hardly sleeping, on her feet all day and night. She and Poe were always careful, and now she and Finn are, too. Her courses have been late, or else skipped altogether — but they have always come back.

When she wakes, nauseous again, on the morning of Poe’s memorial service — what would have been his thirtieth birthday — and vomits, and then sits and stares down at the clean cotton between her legs, she knows that this time, they won’t. The soldiers have all recovered, by now: she didn’t have the flu after all.

_February, January, December…_

Her eyes fill with tears. _Christmas. Poe._ She buries her face in her hands and sobs in silence.

She cleans herself up, dresses in the new mourning gown ordered hastily from London. Black has never become her: she looks pale, wan, a wraith. She has not been eating since the news. _That will have to change, now._ Her hands float to her stomach. _A piece of him still lives,_ comes the thought; and she presses a handkerchief to her eyes and hurries downstairs, to where her aunt is calling her, before the tears can come again.

The service is held in the chapel on the Damerons’ property: the same chapel where the wedding would have been. There is no body to bury; an empty coffin goes into the ground, into the family plot, where the only son should never have been laid before his parents. Ben has come home again from Oxford for the service and he sits stoic at his mother’s side as Leia cries silently into her handkerchief, regretting all the times she had conceded to Poe’s earnest faith and let him go to war unmarried.

Rey hardly sees the ceremony at all; she is as blind, clutching her father’s arm with one hand, Finn’s with the other, to keep herself upright. Poe’s parents had asked if she wanted to make a speech and she had turned them down, shaking her head, knowing that the words would not, might never come. The ring still glimmers on her left-hand finger, but it seems to her its shine has dulled. 

Her secret, though, glows within her, brighter than the sun.

Afterwards there is a wake at the manor-house. Lady Sara comes to her, folds her, tearful, into a warm, amber-scented embrace, and Rey does not cry. “He loved you so,” Poe’s mother whispers, and Rey closes her eyes. _I know._

 

* * *

 

The weeks that follow are grey, both inside the house and out. The weather is miserable; so, too, is the mood. Even the soldiers — normally so gay and cheerful, to be lightly wounded, healing, and out of the line — are subdued, having learned the news, and seen its effects on the plucky, charming head nurse they all adore. Rey works herself ragged, speaks seldom, cries herself to sleep in Finn’s arms every night. Her blooming countenance takes on a haunted aspect; she is thin, her eyes shadowed. She is sick every morning, and sometimes dashes to the WC between shifts or over luncheon, to fall to her knees and stare woozily into the porcelain bowl. No-one yet knows her secret: she feels that if she speaks of it too soon, it will be taken from her, and she cannot bear to take that chance.

She has her work and her own concerns; Finn has only long hours of physical therapy, battles against himself, after which he has little to do but read and sleep and write, lose himself in memories of Poe. He quickly begins to feel like he is drowning in the past. He needs a purpose, a future. He finds it in the cause of peace.

Like Rey with her own secret, he tells no-one, at first. Her one mention of Lady Maud’s pacifist friends, just after Poe left, never turned into anything more; and now, of course, he cannot bring it up again. Leia, despite being friends with Maud as well, has never spoken of her new cause one way or another, nor has Luke; Finn suspects they would be sympathetic, but doesn’t want to raise the issue, just in case. The house is full of soldiers: never mind his wound, they would be quick to deride him for a traitor or a feather-man, were they to find out his new ideals. And Rey has enough on her mind. So Finn writes away for pamphlets and treatises from America and London and makes sure he is always the first to get the post.

He subscribes to Hamilton Holt’s magazine _The Independent,_ and reads and rereads his year-old publication _The Way to Disarm,_ marvelling that people were thinking of such things barely eight weeks into the war, and wondering why and how he himself was not. He follows avidly the discussions and negotiations surrounding the prospective formation of a League to Enforce Peace. He learns that, in Washington, a Women’s Peace Party was established barely a month ago — and it’s after this that he begins to think he should share his new knowledge with Rey.

“Did you ever speak again with Lady Maud?” He broaches the subject carefully, one night while Rey is changing his dressing, just as it had come up the first time.

“About what?” Rey is distracted; there is a distant look in her eyes, these days. She folds a clean bandage over his arm, going through the motions by rote. 

“About…her friends. The Marxist Quakers.” Finn attempts a smile, and Rey looks up.

“Oh — them; I had nearly forgotten…” She frowns. “Come to think of it, no. She came to the wake”— here she swallows, as if the word were lodged in her throat — “but obviously she didn’t mention anything then. I think they’re still having meetings, but she hasn’t asked me again if I’d like to come.” She looks at him, remembering: “But you said you wanted to, didn’t you?”

Finn cannot read her tone, whether she approves or not. He nods. “Yes, I…well, I’m bored, in the house all the time. I thought it might be something to do.” His excuse is feeble; he covers it with a shrug, hating to feel this embarrassed around Rey, of all people.

“Well, I could write to her, if you’d really like me to — I suppose you must be going a little stir-crazy, after so long.” She gives a brief smile and touches his cheek before beginning to clean up and stow her supplies, looking relieved; he is the last patient of the night.

“Would you go with me?”

Rey’s hands still on the clean bandages she’s rolling. “Yes,” she answers, more definitively than he’d thought she would — and then repeats it: “Yes. I will.”

Finn smiles, unseen by her. “You’re interested?”

Before she answers, Rey picks up the lamp from the bedside table, goes to the wardrobe, and begins to remove her nursing clothes and dress for bed; she has not slept in her own bed in weeks, and her clothing has started migrating into Finn’s room, too. “Well — yes. Since I first brought it up, I’ve been thinking about it more and more, and the more I think, the more…right these women seem. I don’t know about their more radical ideas, but the war…” 

She pauses, collecting her thoughts. Finn watches her undo her stays with a sigh of relief, discarding her heavy uniform and pulling a nightgown on over her head. 

“The war is a cancer,” she says, turning back to him. She looks tired — she always does, these days — but she is still so beautiful, her hair tumbling loose from its neat cap and mass of pins, spilling careless around her shoulders. “It’s infected the whole country— the whole continent — and it’s spreading still. It’s taken so much from us already.” She sighs, sitting down on the bed, rubbing her forehead. Gently, Finn pulls her closer, and she relaxes against him with a heavy exhalation.

“I know,” he says. “And I’ve been thinking about it, too. I agree with them — with the pacifists,” he adds, carefully trying out the new word, which he’s seen used in his magazines from America. “I’ve been doing more than thinking, actually,” he continues, and, taking his good arm from around Rey’s shoulders, he leans down to his bedside table and opens the drawer.

He pulls out his whole cache of magazines, pamphlets, and essays on the cause of peace, tied in a bundle that expands with the post every week. He places it with ceremony on the bed between them, glancing up at Rey with a slight smile on his face.

Her eyes are wide. “What’s all this?” She does not sound angry in the slightest. 

Finn takes a deep breath. He hadn’t realised how passionate he felt about it until now, until being asked to share it; he starts to explain, hoping to do the new ideas justice.

“I’ve been reading up on the cause. There’s literature from America, plenty of it, in fact —” He holds up Holt’s work, a copy of the _Independent._ “There are political parties being established with disarmament and ceasefire among their primary goals. There are _women,_ Rey, so many women; there’s a whole cohort of them in America who are calling for peace and an end to the war —”

“That’s wonderful.” Rey says it simply, no surprise, just acceptance: _this is the way it should be._ She takes one of the pamphlets from it —  _On Disarmament,_ Finn sees — and starts leafing through it, skimming hungrily over the tight-packed paragraphs. “I didn’t know,” she murmurs. “So many others.”

“Not too many here,” Finn says, slightly disappointed, “but in America they’re out in force. If they could persuade their government to stay out of the war, or to intervene and make peace…”

“…the cancer would stop spreading,” Rey finishes. She sighs, almost wistfully. “Change. We need change.”

“So you’ll talk to Lady Maud? We’ll go, if she invites you?”

“Of course we will.” Rey nods decisively, and Finn knows for certain that she is on his side; that she will follow through on her word. He feels a thrill of love for her and her determination — and too at the thought of meeting others who share his views. “Now — are you ready?”

Finn nods. “Come here.” He shifts back in bed, resting against the headboard, and Rey climbs into his lap.

Once she’s settled herself between his legs, Finn begins, slowly, to braid her hair, combing through it with the fingers of his good hand. They have devised a rehabilitation exercise for him that also serves as a daily moment of intimacy for the two of them; he manoeuvres his once-dominant right hand as best he can, holding the braid steady as he adds to it with the left, which is beginning to gain dexterity and strength. It takes exponentially longer to finish the task than it would were Rey to do it herself, but neither of them mind; she sits patiently, hardly moving, as he fumbles. 

“I think he would approve,” she says softly, after several minutes of comfortable silence. 

Finn nods, his hands still working carefully on her hair. It’s nowhere approaching neat, but he thinks he sees progress every night. “I think so, too. Some people would say it’s an insult to his memory, to protest the war in which he fought so bravely; but it feels to me more like we’re honouring him. We can’t bring back what we lost, but maybe…maybe we can stop others from losing the same.”

“Exactly.”

Finn hands the finished plait over Rey’s shoulder for her to inspect. “What do you think?”

“Lovely,” she pronounces, as she does every night, and turns around in his lap to take his face in her hands and kiss him. 

“It’s late,” Rey finally says, pulling back after a moment or an age. “I have an early shift tomorrow morning.”

“You have an early shift every morning.” Finn kisses her one last time. “To bed, then.”

They snuggle together under the covers, Finn’s arm tucked beneath Rey’s back (he jokes that now he can hold her forever, for if the arm falls asleep he will not feel it.) She reaches to snuff out the lamp, and they settle into one another, letting go of the weight of another day without Poe. They cannot feel it yet, but with every shared dawn, it lightens.

Finn’s good hand has settled on Rey’s stomach, resting lightly. As she closes her eyes and begins to think of sleep, she wonders if she should tell him yet — he has opened up to her, she should show the same courtesy to him. But practically, she knows, it is too early yet: she could not bear to get his hopes up and then have something go wrong. She will wait until she is certain; and then she will tell him, and smile at him, and watch the light flood back into his eyes. 

_He’s with us. He still is; he always will be. And the war will end. One day. One day._

 

* * *

 

As luck would have it, Rey runs into Lady Maud the next time she goes into town, coming up the high street as Maud is emerging from a shop. “Lady Monmouth!” Rey exclaims, hurrying to greet her. “Just the person I wanted to see!”

“Oh?” The older woman’s kind face is amused as Rey practically skids to a stop in front of her, beaming. “And why’s that, my dear girl?”

“The meetings! The suffrage league that isn’t really, anymore. You invited me to a meeting ages ago, but then everything happened with Poe and the time got away from me, I never gave you an answer — so I wanted to tell you now that I _am_ interested, and my dear Finn is too, and you said your friend held these meetings and you talked about peace and we would like to be there. If you’ll have us.” She finishes her excited tirade and looks eagerly at Maud, her breath clouding in the air between them.

Lady Monmouth gives a laugh, sounding charmed. “Of course we’ll have you. We’d love to — we’re always looking to expand our circle.”

“Wonderful! When is the next meeting? And where? At the usual spot?”

“At the house of the friend I told you about, the one who started all of this.” With a glint in her eye, Maud takes out a visiting-card from the little case in her bag, and writes down an address in her beautiful handwriting. She hands it to Rey, who scrutinises it, and then looks up at Maud:

“But this is your address!” She’s lowered her voice, unconsciously conspiratorial.

Maud’s smile widens, her eyes twinkling. “So it is.”

“Your friend —?”

“She’s me.” Maud winks. “All the secrecy is rather silly, I know, but many people still disagree with our ideas…” As if on cue, a troupe of White Feather women turn a corner across the street, looking puffed-up and self-important as ever. Maud’s nose wrinkles when she sees them, and then she turns back to Rey. “We’re calling ourselves the Alliance. Just specific enough to make us a community, but vague enough to keep the likes of _them_ off our tail. Mention that name at the door when you come by next Thursday and Harry will let you in.”

“Wonderful,” Rey repeats, her eyes shining with the thrill of a child keeping a secret. “Oh, I can’t wait to tell Finn.”

“I look forward to seeing the both of you next week,” Maud tells her sincerely. “Come for dinner at seven o’clock.”

“We will!” On an impulse, Rey reaches out and hugs Maud, feeling the strength in her birdlike frame. She reminds Rey of her Aunt Leia — and, perhaps, of the mother she never knew. “Goodbye, then, Lady Monmouth.” She dips a sweet curtsey.

“Good day, Aurelia. Until Thursday.” With one last smile Maud turns, and is off to her next errand, processing down the street with her head held high as a queen’s. Rey watches her go with pure admiration. To be a woman who moves like that through the world — Rey thinks she would like that, very much.

 

* * *

 

“Are you ready?” Rey pokes her head into their bedroom on Thursday night to find Finn seated in an armchair, reading. She pats at her hair, braided elaborately with Leia’s help: it looks lovely, but already the pins tug at and stick in her scalp. She’ll have a headache later.

Finn looks up, and smiles, despite his nerves, at the sight of her. “I think so.” He rises, smoothing down his evening-jacket with his good hand; the other is wrapped in a sling across his chest. 

“You look so handsome.” Rey kisses his cheek and takes his proffered arm; together, they go downstairs, where Luke and Leia wait in the foyer to see them off.

“You’re certain you can drive in those shoes?” Luke looks with concern at his daughter’s evening heels, also borrowed from her aunt. “I can take you, I don’t mind, or else Cecil —”

“We’ll be _fine,”_ Rey interrupts him. She rather likes the thought of being the one to drive them to Lady Maud’s house, and in an evening gown, no less. “Won’t we, Finn?”

“She’s an excellent driver,” Finn confirms, and Luke relents, laughing:

“In cahoots, the two of you. Very well — but be careful, my dear.” 

“I always am.” Rey kisses his cheek and then Leia’s. “We’ll be home late, I expect; don’t wait up!”

“You’ll have to tell us all about it in the morning,” Leia insists. “I’d go myself, but Cora and the boys” — the soldiers, she means — “need me here.”

“We will,” Finn promises, smiling at his aunt. When she learned of their new cause, she’d been delighted, and had confessed to harbouring pacifist sentiments herself: _I do hope all those overpriced mediums aren’t telling the truth about the spirit world, for if Han found out, I’d never hear the end of it._

“Goodnight, then!” Rey waves merrily, and then they are off. 

“What d’you think it’ll be like, tonight?” Finn asks, from the passenger seat, as Rey starts the engine and reverses down the drive. “Just a lot of…talking?”

“Maud mentioned that some people would be giving speeches, yes,” Rey answers, “and that there are arguments, too, usually. She said we’re under no obligation to contribute to the discussion, but that it’s much more fun if we do.” Finn can see her smile in profile, even in the dim evening light. “Dinner first, though.”

After telling the butler — Harry, presumably— their names and the magic word _Alliance,_ Rey and Finn’s coats are taken, and they are led into the dining-room, to find the long banquet table already full. Lady Maud rises from her seat and greets them warmly:

“Aurelia, Finn. I’m so pleased to see you here.” She motions to the empty seats next to her with a smile. “We’ve just begun.”

Introductions are made all round the table as the first course, a light soup, is served; the Germans’ recently-imposed U-boat blockade has restricted the availability of many food items, and Lady Maud’s household has diminished with the outbreak of war, but she has retained a talented cook and the spread she has managed to produce is magnificent. Many of the guests are familiar, women from the suffrage league, but there are an encouraging number of new faces as well. All told, probably twenty people sit around the long table, the youngest being Maud’s niece, at sixteen; the oldest, the venerable Lady Wightmore and her husband, both approaching seventy. Everyone greets Rey and Finn kindly, and by the time they reach the second course, Finn can feel himself starting to relax. 

While elegant, the atmosphere is far less formal and stilted than he had expected; he had been envisioning the labyrinthine manners and coded glances of a secret society, ready to exclude himself and Rey for more reasons than one. What he finds, instead, is excellent food and lively chatter; women who ask him questions and draw him into the conversation when they notice his reservation; and, woven through the evening like a golden thread, the electric filament of hope for change.

After supper, they retire into the drawing-room for drinks and discussion: the salon part of the evening. Dinner’s conversation spills over from the dining-room, and as Rey and Finn take their seats on a divan, Finn listens in to what some of the women are saying.

“Christmas, we all said,” says Clara Stratford, a middle-aged teacher who is here with her sister and young nephew. “We couldn’t have been more wrong. And how much longer will they let it go on?”

“Until every young man in Europe is dead,” pipes up Amy Brown bitterly: her fiancé and two brothers were all killed in the first month of the war. She still wears her engagement ring, and her once-angelic face has been prematurely aged and hardened by grief.

“It does seem that way, sometimes,” agrees Lady Maud softly, shaking her head. “But we must preserve hope.” She looks around. “That’s why we’re all here,” she says, addressing the room, and murmurs of agreement rise up. “To remember that there _is_ still hope that this war will end, and soon, before the world as we knew it is lost to us forever. It is the people like us who will bring about change, not the warmongers in the Home Office or the thousands who blindly follow their decrees. Peace may not yet be within our grasp, but one day, it will.”

There are a few “Hear, hear!”s from the crowd, Rey’s included. Maud looks around, a calm smile on her face. “Does anyone wish to begin with a speech?”

One of the younger women volunteers, standing up with a nervous smile, clutching a stack of folded papers in her hands. Maud nods to her, and clearing her throat several times, the girl begins; she speaks, tremulously at first and then growing braver, about the submarine blockades being employed by both sides, about the hunger beginning to creep its way across Germany and the tragedy of so many civilians being drawn involuntarily into the war in this way. When she finishes, colour high in her cheeks, she receives an enthusiastic round of applause and returns, beaming and ducking her head, to her seat.

“See, that wasn’t so bad,” Rey murmurs to Finn. She looks at him and arches her brows: “Well?”

“I don’t know,” he deflects. 

He had mentioned to her, earlier in the week, that he thought perhaps to share some thoughts at the salon, ideas he has needed Rey’s help to put to paper — his injury is a long way from letting him write again. It is his vague goal to someday turn the story of this summer and the war, with himself and Rey and Poe, into a novel — one proclaiming a message of peace. Not being able to sit down with pen and paper himself, though, and with Rey having so little spare time, he has not gotten very far; he is not sure whether it even merits bringing up at the salon.

“Think about it,” Rey tells him, as the next speaker, a college professor, begins to talk. And think about it Finn does, as a handful more people share their views, and each receive warm receptions from the crowd. They are asked questions, and answer well; the crowd all seem genuinely interested in, and supportive of, what each of them has to say. Lady Maud keeps the discussion running smoothly, and every once in a while glances over at Rey and Finn — he can’t help but wonder if Rey has told her anything about his writing, _but she wouldn’t, would she…?_

After one last speech the evening seems to be winding down. Finn catches sight of a carriage-clock on the mantel and notices with great surprise that it is already almost eleven. 

“Would anyone else like to speak before we say our goodnights?” Lady Maud’s voice cuts through the almost dreamy air that has settled over the room. Everyone is well-fed, on food and ideas alike, and good wine has been flowing not liberally, but enough to warm and comfort. They can almost, almost pretend that there is no war on at all.

Everyone holds their silence; it seems as though the night will end; and then Finn, seized at last by courage — there are no certain _next times_ in wartime — stands up. “I’ll speak.”

Lady Maud looks satisfied. _Rey must have mentioned, then._ She smiles at him: “By all means.”

Finn takes a deep breath, turning to face the room. He has no prepared notes, as many others did; he has never spoken in public before… _but it’s worth a try. Go on._ It’s Rey’s voice in his head, and Poe’s, too. 

“I was a soldier,” he begins. He glances at his bandaged arm: “Surely you couldn’t tell.”

A ripple of mirth spreads through the room — he hears Rey’s distinctive laugh — and he relaxes. He carries on, not worrying now about remembering his scrawled ideas: only telling the truth, his own story.

“I fought in Belgium and France from October to December, until I was wounded in combat at Festubert. In the time I was at the front, I experienced filth and squalor like nothing I’ve seen before, even as a child on the London streets. I shared funk-holes with corpses and ate food even the rats wouldn’t touch. I saw men I had trained with and come to know like brothers wounded and killed before my very eyes. And I killed and wounded, too.” He swallows, still remembering the choking feeling that had gripped him the first time he shot a man. 

“I lost most of the use of my right arm when I was stabbed by a German soldier,” Finn continues. “The army had no more use for me — and in truth I was relieved. But the war had not finished with me yet. Just weeks after I was invalided home, my…my best friend — a valiant pilot and an honourable man — was killed, and taken from me.”

Murmurs of sympathy. Finn swallows, again, through the tightness in his throat, and speaks on.

“Poe was the best man I have ever known. Were it not for this war, he would be married to Rey, the love of his life” — he gestures to her, and she smiles; her eyes are wet — “and he would be here with us today, speaking for peace. I know he would. We lost him far too soon, but the sooner we take action and speak out against this war, the sooner we can stop other lives from being cut so tragically short. This war is unnecessary. Peace is what we need.”

He may say more; he does not remember. All he knows is that they clap for him, longer and louder than for any of the others, and Maud herself embraces him with tears on her cheeks. Several of the women express their gratitude for his speech, and most surprisingly, the men in attendance all want to shake his hand. They do not think him a coward or a traitor. They think him brave, and right. 

Finn wishes he could drive home, because Rey is crying, all the pent-up tears of the last few weeks spilling out of her now. She insists, over and over, that she is not sad, only so proud; he knows that in truth it is a mixture of both. He is feeling it, too. When they have parked the car at Millennium House she stops him before he gets out, and kisses him full on the mouth. “I am so proud,” she murmurs. “He would have been, too.”

“I hope so,” Finn replies. He looks at her, tearstained and joyful, and he has never loved anything more. _I did this for her. For both of them._ “Let’s go inside.”

They sleep easily that night; and in the morning, Leia waits at the breakfast-table to hear everything. Rey, bursting with pride, recounts Finn’s speech, and Leia beams at him; Luke stands from the table and kisses his ward on the forehead. “My son,” he calls him, and Finn blushes to his toes. He has a real family and he has made them proud.

 

* * *

 

By the end of February, Rey’s grief-slimmed frame has begun to round and soften. She can hide it well enough beneath her thick blue nurse’s uniform and its long white apron — and, thank heaven, she is no longer as ill — but now that she and Finn are sharing a bed, she must still be careful. She stays on the wards after her shift has finished — visiting those soldiers who are still awake, refilling just-replenished glasses, changing blankets, fluffing pillows — waiting until she can be sure Finn’s asleep before creeping upstairs and dressing for sleep in the dark, climbing into bed but being sure not to press herself too close to him beneath the covers. 

(Finn, for his part, has noticed her new distance, and worries. _Have I done something wrong?)_

Finally Rey can keep her secret no longer. She will have to let out the seams in her dresses soon enough — she should have already — but she knows she’ll do a poor job of it herself, mangling the garments perhaps beyond repair. Fabric is hard to come by, these days. She needs help. She goes to Leia.

She knocks on her bedroom door after her shift one night, when she knows Leia and Cora’s cocoa rounds will have finished and her aunt will be getting ready for bed. Sure enough, when Leia calls “Come in,” Rey opens the door and finds her seated at her vanity, uncoiling her masses of thick, hardly-greying dark hair from their heavy, practical braided bun. 

“Good evening, Rey,” Leia says, smiling, picking up a brush. “What brings you here so late?” She gestures for her to sit down in the armchair, which Rey does, folding her hands in her lap in an uncharacteristically nervous fashion.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Rey begins, trying to keep her voice light. “I…need some sewing help, as it happens.” She gives a little laugh: her skills as a seamstress are lovingly joked about among the family.

“Well, certainly,” Leia answers. “With what? Something for the soldiers?”

“No, no — for myself. Nothing big, nothing fancy, but I still don’t know if I can do it myself.” To her dismay, Rey finds there to be a lump in her throat, a feeling of deep stress and worry that she knows is illogical — Leia will understand, of course she will; but first Rey must get the words out. “I need to let out some of my dresses. My uniforms, and some other ones.” She swallows. “All of them, in fact.”

Leia frowns. She has noticed that Rey’s figure has begun to fill out again, but had only seen it as going back to the way it was before Poe’s death, not changing significantly. Now, though, she gazes at her niece, and notices a new softness to her — one she recognises from her own daily scrutiny of herself in the mirror more than nineteen years ago. She remembers how Rey’s flu had persisted, long after the others’ symptoms had vanished, and she thinks she understands; but still she does not let her eyes drop to Rey’s stomach. “I can help you with that,” she tells her. “Of course. Is there any — reason for it?” she asks, gently.

Rey shakes her head, too quickly, aware that she’s not helping herself. “No,” she almost whispers, and then suddenly her tears spill over. She balls her fists and sits stoically, tears streaming down her face, as her aunt looks at her with unrestrained sympathy. 

“Poe’s?” Leia asks softly, and Rey nods, relieved not to have to form the words herself. “You’re certain?”

“Yes,” Rey whispers. “Oh, Aunt Leia —”

Leia opens her arms, and Rey lays her head in her lap and sobs. Her aunt strokes her back, her hair, whispering soothing words. “Everything will be all right,” she promises. “Neither you or the child will want for anything.”

“You don’t know that,” Rey protests, raising her head. “What if his parents —?”

“Give them some credit,” Leia says firmly. “Luke told me all about the scandal that arose when Lady Sara married Kenneth: she’d been promised to another man, but they fell in love, and that was that. They kept their heads high and weathered it beautifully — and look at them now. They won’t disinherit their only son’s legacy.”

“We weren’t married.”

“You were as good as. They know it, we know it, the village knows it. And times are changing, sweet girl. I think you’ll find that people are more inclined to celebrate new life these days than to worry where it came from.” Leia caresses the top of her niece’s head. “Does anyone else know? Does Finn?”

Rey shakes her head. “I’ll tell him. And I’ll tell my father, and Poe’s parents — I will.” She sighs, looking weary and young. “I couldn’t be sure before — that’s why I didn’t say anything — but now I’m certain.” She looks down at her body, lays one tentative hand on her stomach, and then looks up at Leia: “Will you come with me when I tell the Damerons? I don’t know if I’ll be able to get the words out.” She gives a small laugh.

“Of course I will. But Rey, darling — tell Finn first.” 

So she does. That night, instead of wandering the wards after the end of her shift (the men all express their disappointment), she goes straight up to bed, knowing she’ll find Finn awake. Sure enough, when she opens the door, he looks up in surprise from his book, and a hesitant, delighted smile spreads over his face.

“Hello,” he greets her, and makes to get up from bed.

“No, don’t,” Rey bids him: he looks exhausted; Hattie told her that they’d made great progress with his physical therapy today, but that it had worn them both out. She sees from his face that this is true. 

Instead of going straight to the wardrobe like she usually would, Rey comes to take a seat on their bed, a nervous look on her face. Finn, concerned, lays down his book. “What is it? You’re up here early.”

He is relieved to have Rey back — her distance, of late, had tormented him — but the look on her face worries him, now. Shamefully, his first thought is that she has found someone else, one of the soldiers downstairs, perhaps — they’re all half in love with her, he knows. A man with two undamaged arms, who can hold her properly, who has money and a name and will give her anything she wants. A whole man, the kind of man she deserves. 

When Rey opens her mouth and says, “I have something to tell you,” Finn, his delight defeated, prepares himself to hear this other suitor’s name.

“Go on,” he says quietly. _Let it be over quickly._

Rey gives a half-smile. “Don’t look so worried. It’s good news.” She brushes a hand over his cheek, seeming to steel herself as she does so. “I’m pregnant, my love.”

Finn is stunned. His mouth opens, but he cannot find words. Finally, in a voice he hardly recognises, he whispers, “Poe’s?”

Rey nods. “The last time we…” 

She breaks off. She looks like she will start crying, but instead, she stands abruptly and goes to the wardrobe, starts stripping off her restrictive clothes. Finn can practically see her body relaxing as each layer is removed. She pulls a nightgown over her head, and when she turns back to him, he sees the way the loose cloth drapes and caresses the rounding of her belly. 

“I don’t know how I didn’t notice before,” is all Finn can say, as she comes back over to bed and settles between his legs for their nightly ritual: she does not seem to want to discuss it any further, and he will respect her choice. His arms move with less hesitation, his fingers are surer now; he begins to comb through her hair. 

“I didn’t want you to,” Rey answers, and there is an apology in her voice. “I’m sorry to have kept it from you, to have been so _furtive…_ I was only worried. If anything should have happened…”

“I know.” Finn’s hands work steadily on the plait, one arm aching from today’s exercises. He can feel himself getting stronger; it is only that the strength comes with pain. 

Rey is silent, one hand on her stomach, as Finn finishes the braid and puts it over her shoulder for her to inspect. “Lovely,” she declares it softly, as usual, and turns in his lap to kiss him. 

They lie down in bed. Rey puts out the light, and when Finn reaches for her, she sinks into his embrace. She murmurs with contentment as his arms come around her and he rests one hand, wonderingly, on her stomach. He breathes in the scent of her hair, brushes a kiss to the nape of her neck, and listens as her heartbeat and breathing begin to calm.

“Rey,” Finn says softly, and her eyes open again.

“What is it, my love?”

“I know I’m not him.” He stops there.

“Finn?”

“I know I’m not him, but…will you marry me, Rey?”

“Oh, Finn. _Oh,_ Finn.” Rey twists in his arms to press her lips to his; they are both startled to find they are crying. “Of course. Of course I will. Oh, my darling.”

“There’s still time — the chapel, the flowers —” They have not yet had time to cancel everything.

“No,” Rey cuts him off. “I don’t want to…re-use all the plans he and I made.” He feels her swallow. “You and I should have something different. Something all our own.”

Finn understands. “I’ll buy you a ring,” he tells her. “But if you’d like to wear his, still, then do, please do.” He has grown used to the sight of her slim, nimble hands accented with soft, worn gold; every time he sees the ring, he thinks of Poe. Her hands would be naked without it — it would be as if he had never been, as if he had never held those hands in his own.

“I think I will,” Rey says quietly. “Yes. I should like to have something from the both of you.” She sniffs, and Finn can hear her trying to hold back further tears; but eventually she gives in, and cries quietly into his shoulder for some minutes. He holds her. 

“If it’s a boy,” she says finally, “I should like to name it for him.”

“And we will,” Finn promises her. “Of course we will.”

The child, he thinks as he falls asleep, will grow up as if with three parents. It will know its father’s name from the beginning, whether it shares it or not; it will hear stories, see pictures of him as soon as it can begin to understand what they mean. It will know, always, how much he loved them both, and how he would have loved it, his child, had he lived. 

It will know, Finn vows, the kind of love that his and Rey’s childhoods had lacked, or held only for a short while; and it will know that love forever.

 

* * *

 

They first break the news of their engagement, and then of the baby, to the family. Leia, of course, already knows, but acts surprised when they tell her; she shares a private smile with Rey, whose face glows as she watches her father exclaim and pat Finn on the back, tell him he couldn’t be happier. It is Rey’s idea to write to Ben and ask him to be godfather, and his reply comes quicker than any of his letters have for weeks, since he left after the funeral: _Yes, of course I will. It would be an honour._

They buy a ring in London, and Rey calls in the dressmaker to fit her dress to her altered, still-changing frame — that was one thing they could not, nor would, waste from her and Poe’s plans. Rey suggests a small ceremony in March, less than a month from now, and Finn agrees. 

“And what of the honeymoon?” she asks him, after they have gone down into town to look at suits for Finn: the one Luke offered doesn’t fit, Finn being shorter and broader besides. Now they have stopped at a good tea-shop for a break before returning to the house for supper and Rey’s evening shift. “Where would you like to go, my darling?”

“Australia?” Finn suggests: their private joke, which seems even now to include Poe.

Rey laughs, knowing he isn’t serious, and swirls her spoon through her tea as she thinks, her deliberate circles nearly sloshing the liquid out of the cup and seeming to mirror the turning of gears in her brain. “What about America?” she offers. “Neither of us have been.”

In all the excitement, Finn had nearly forgotten the news article he’d read with great interest a few days ago and meant to, but still hasn’t, shared with Rey. Now, though, at her mention of America, he almost drops the sugar-tongs he’s holding, sending the cube — a rare treat, of late — splashing into his second cup of tea. “Philadelphia!” he exclaims.

“Bless you!” Rey replies immediately, her mouth twitching with amusement. “What’s in Philadelphia?”

“There’s going to be a convention,” Finn says, thinking furiously, trying to remember the details he’d read in the _Independent_ earlier this week. “There’s a group being put together — the League to Enforce Peace — and their inaugural meeting will be in Philadelphia this summer. June, I think.” He looks at Rey, whose eyes have widened with excitement as he speaks, and feels a smile spreading across his own face.

“But that’s perfect!” Rey exclaims, so enthusiastically that several nearby diners look over. She reaches across the table to grab Finn’s hands, nearly bouncing out of her seat. “Finn, we _must!_ We must go! American ships are neutral, it’ll be perfectly safe — oh, _yes,_ what a honeymoon! How clever you are!” And she picks up their clasped hands and smacks a kiss to the back of his.

“A March wedding and a June honeymoon,” Finn says, liking the sound of it.

“Or why not May? We could go for a month or two, take time to explore,” Rey suggests. “If the United States do get drawn into the war, we might not have the chance for ages yet, so we should make the most of it while we can. Perhaps we could see where Poe grew up.” 

Her eyes have taken on a dreamy but determined look, and Finn knows she’s already making plans to ambush Lady Dameron and wheedle every detail of the family’s Florida home, where Poe had spent the first ten years of his life, from her. Finn imagines the two of them, him and Rey, strolling arm-in-arm through the Spanish-style villa’s lush gardens — Poe has told them all about them — with his and Poe’s rings on Rey’s finger. By May she will be six months along, and no doubt glowing with life. He cannot imagine a prettier scene.

“It’s decided,” Finn says, and grins at her. She beams back. For a moment, it even feels as if they have been smiled on from above.

 

* * *

 

March arrives; they set the wedding date for the twenty-second of the month. The (very few) new invitations go out. Ben will come down from Oxford, on the break between Hilary and Trinity terms; Caroline will do her best to come up from London. When Finn and Rey broke the news to Kenneth and Sara, they both cried, and Lady Dameron embraced Rey, smiling, smiling through her tears. She insisted Rey wear her veil, and this brought Rey to tears, too. They left the Damerons’ arm-in-arm, and Rey confessed to Finn that she was relieved to have their blessing:

“I know there’s no-one better to raise his child than you, and I’m glad they know it, too.”

The first weeks of the month pass in a blur of preparations, accelerated but still less frantic and involved than the previous wedding’s plans. Luxuries are in shorter supply these days, but Rey pronounces indifference, declares that she will have a simple wedding, be married in a paper bag if she has to, as long as she has her family around her and will be Finn’s wife by the end of it. And no-one can argue with that, least of all her blushing groom-to-be. 

Ben comes home on the fifteenth. The family all welcome him with open arms, tell them how they have missed him — Leia especially, who holds on longer and tighter than the rest, kisses his forehead with such warmth, as if he has been away at the front all this time and she is relieved to find him alive. He is glad to be home, or he supposes he is; in truth he has hardly thought of his family, and has missed home insomuch only as _home_ means _Hux;_ but it doesn’t, now. He is not here.

“How is school?” they ask him, and Ben murmurs vagaries. His classes are interesting (when he bothers to attend.) His classmates are decent (those few of them who remain.) His digs are comfortable (and he would know, for he rarely leaves them.) His tutors are strict (and have threatened him with failure more times than he can count.) He has passed all his exams, he thinks (so perhaps miracles exist after all.) Yes, he has enough money. (What would he spend it on?) Yes, he has friends. (His books, his art, Hux’s letters — and fewer of those every week.) Yes, he is fine. Yes, he is happy. No, he is not lying, Mama, please have some faith. 

Small changes: the vitriol Ben received all autumn seems to have subsided. He cannot tell if it is better to be what he is now: a ghost, less than nothing, not even worth their hateful attention. He has always felt like this — or always since the accident, an eternity ago. He supposes it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world caught up.

(Peter Hahn, the German boy, was hospitalised after the beating he took in October; someone else came across him after Ben left. He has not returned to school since. Ben thinks of him every day, less with regret than with a kind of emptiness. A lack of feeling. If he could go back, he would not change what he did — what he didn’t do.)

In his own bed Ben touches himself, thinking of Hux and his pitiless mouth, and comes shaking. He wants him so badly — wants him how he was before, before the war, before he went away and came back changed. He wants the summer back: their endless summer, cut short too soon. 

He knows he should be grateful for the letters he does receive, short and oft-disturbing as they are. Any reply is far better than having his own returned “officially unread” — indicating that the intended recipient is dead — but they give such small comfort. Hux is alive, Ben knows that much; but his state of mind does not seem sound. He writes of disturbing dreams, dead boys and screaming ghosts, and what with the horrors in the news Ben can hardly distinguish between imaginings and truth. He does not know if Hux can, himself, anymore. 

He wants to see him. He has convinced himself that if he can only see him again, things will be all right, they will be as they were — never mind that this didn’t work in October, nor again in January. _Another time. Once more. All we need is more time._ For a while, it looks as though they will get it: Hux mentions getting leave in March, and Ben awaits news with desperate hope. 

When finally it comes — in a thin, creased, stained envelope, the postmark suggesting that the mail was once more delayed — he wishes for silence again.

_15 March 1915_

_Ben,_

_I’ve done something noble and I hope you will forgive me. This morning I received notice of my leave, starting Saturday and lasting a whole five days; but when the post came this evening, one of my men learned that his wife gave birth early to a baby girl. He had secured leave for the time the baby was expected — but that was more than two months from now, still, and with such a premature birth, you understand the need for urgency… I gave my leave up to him. I’m sorry._

_On the bright side, we have arranged it so that I will take his, in late May. Better than nothing, no?_

_We have been in the line since the tenth. Things began well enough — a new crop of men came from England to replace our losses, which bolstered everyone’s spirits; our planes bombed the German railways and their marching men, quite spectacularly. I thought of poor Mr Dameron and how proud he would have been. But the three days of fighting that followed were pointless and messy; the Indian Corps especially suffered staggering losses; we are running out of ammunition. Finally they cancelled our offensive today. We captured the town of N.C., but it does not seem to have done much good for our side, or ill for theirs. This has become something of a refrain — endless attacks in which we gain nothing, only lose shells and men and sanity. I suppose the consolation is that it is the same for them._

_I am still not sleeping well, when I sleep at all. You may guess why but I will not commit it to paper, for fear they will commit me._ _I’m fine, though. Filthy, cold, hungry, lonely; but that is about what passes for fine out here. Every bit as glamorous as we hoped._

_Send my congratulations to your cousin and Finn on their wedding, and the baby. It’s good to be reminded that life does, indeed, go on._

_Hux._

The words “and sanity” have been barred-out, but lightly enough to indicate that it was Hux who did it himself, and not a censor with a harsh black pen. He is not sleeping: Ben knows this means nightmares. He sits at his escritoire with the flimsy paper in his hand and tries to imagine the horrors that Hux has seen. Somehow he knows that anything he can call to mind, Hux has seen tenfold worse. 

_Late May._ A lump sits in Ben’s throat, omnipresent of late; it hurts to swallow around. _Late May_ swells it, like to choke him. Life goes on, indeed — but so slowly, and yet all too fast. Hux’s absence feels like the divot left behind in the sheets when one lover leaves the bed. 

_But only for now,_ Ben tries to remind himself. _He’s safe; he’s made it through so much and he’s safe._ It is mid-March. Eight more weeks — less than Rey had to endure, when Finn and Poe were at training; less, even, than the time between Hux’s going to war and his first leave in October. 

This should comfort Ben — he has lived through this and worse before — but he knew so little, then.

 

* * *

 

Rey and Finn are married that Sunday, at the courthouse in the village. She is radiant in her white dress and Lady Sara’s mantilla veil; a smile never leaves Finn’s face all day. The judge asks them for their vows and they say, “I do,” in perfect unison, bursting into laughter as they kiss, and kiss again, to the applause and cheers of the small wedding-party. They sign the register and leave the courthouse hand-in-hand, stepping into the sunlight that has broken through the clouds, showered in birdseed and blessings by the ones they love most.

At the wedding breakfast they drink toasts to the newlyweds’ future, and Rey calls for one to Poe’s memory as well, holding back her tears as everyone raises their glass and intones his name. She catches Finn’s eye and sees that he is emotional, too, his eyes glistening wet; she takes his hand and squeezes it as they clink their cups. “To Poe.” 

The telegrams are read, the gifts are brought out, course after course of fine food is consumed; for the morning, it is like there is no war. Once the other gifts have been given, Lord Kenneth stands and announces that he and his wife have something to give to the couple. He produces a key from inside his morning-coat.

“When Aurelia was betrothed to our son, we had planned to give them a cottage as their wedding gift — a home of their own.” He swallows before he speaks his next words, fighting through a wave of emotion: “As we all know, Poe did not live to take this lovely woman to be his wife; but we saw no reason why the lucky man who did, and who was his dearest friend, should not accept the gift in his place.” He holds the key out to Rey and Finn. “His memory, and his love, live on with you.”

The party all applaud as Finn takes the key and is embraced warmly by Kenneth, both men smiling through their tears. Rey hugs him next, nearly a foot shorter than the older man, and she and Sara kiss each other’s cheeks, squeeze each other’s hands. “We have gained a new daughter,” Sara tells her. She turns to Finn, looking up at him from her diminutive height: “And a new son, besides. The two of you were everything to him.”

“And he to us,” Finn tells her, wrapping his arm around Rey, who is weeping and laughing, wiping the tears from her face with the hand not gripping the key. “Thank you. Thank you.”

The rest of the day is a happy blur. When finally they are alone in their bedroom (the soldiers downstairs greeted them with whoops, kissed Rey’s blushing cheeks, clapped Finn’s back, and sent them up to bed with ribaldry), Rey turns to Finn with her veil removed, her hair loose, and he thinks he has never seen a lovelier sight than her in her dress in the lamplight, with his ring and Poe’s on her finger.

“Finally,” she murmurs, stepping close to him and beginning to unfasten her dress: his fingers still cannot quite manage the tiny buttons, the hooks and eyes. “I’ve been beside you all day, but I miss you.” 

The dress falls to the floor and she steps out of it to kiss him. She takes off her undergarments and the full beauty of her body is revealed, the growing swell of her stomach. Finn enfolds her in his arms, reverently, and then she helps him undress, and they fall into bed. 

They pass their wedding-night as most new wives and husbands do. Later, when they are curling into one another and preparing for sleep — Rey turns her face up, eyes closed, for one last goodnight kiss; Finn traces circles on her bare shoulder with his good thumb, in a rhythm that will only slow and falter as they drift into slumber — each of them is thinking that this is the happiest night of their lives.

 

* * *

 

The next day they take Poe’s car — theirs, now — to the cottage. Rey drives, following the map Kenneth has made for them; it is a lovely route, winding over the moors and through the hills, and the weather is pleasant, the surprising warmth of the sunshine interrupted only by a light, cool breeze. Finn half-dozes in the passenger seat and is woken by Rey’s gentle touch on his arm: “We’re here.”

The cottage is a sweet little stone structure, perched amid verdant hedges and blushing rose-bushes, with a white gravel path winding its way to the front door. Rey exclaims, hurrying out of the car and taking Finn’s arm to walk up the drive and cross the threshold of their new home together. They explore with childlike delight the cosy, warm rooms, already furnished with well-loved antiques from Sara’s and Kenneth’s family collections. The master bedroom is tucked neatly under the eaves upstairs; there is a room next door that will be perfect for a nursery; and there is room on the ground floor for a library of their very own. 

“We’re going to be happy here,” Rey whispers, stroking the handmade quilt that adorns their new bed, and Finn can only nod, overwhelmed. At long last, he feels he has truly come home.

They go outside. They both have one thing on their minds: a memorial has already been erected at the Damerons’ house, but “we’ll have one here, too,” Rey says softly, as they walk across the grounds. By unspoken consensus, they come to a stop at the same time, in a sunny spot where the grass is just beginning to poke up, green, through the late-winter ground. “We’ll plant violets for him.”

Finn nods his agreement. He wraps his arm around Rey, who nestles into him, her other hand going to her stomach. They stand there, envisioning the headstone — a statue, maybe, too, or a fountain — that will bear his name and preserve his memory; and it seems to him both that he is already there, that he has been waiting for them. _Welcome home._

Rey looks up at Finn and smiles. “We’re going to be happy here.”

 

* * *

 

They are planning to send soldiers to fight the Ottomans and Ben has no idea whether Hux will be among them. He has not heard anything definitive from him in weeks, since the announcement of his forsaken leave, and a short, follow-up note to tell him that the man’s new-born daughter was thriving against all odds. Nothing more on his own new leave, and now nothing on Gallipoli. Ben thinks of Hux marching and sweating and killing under the merciless Ottoman sun. He tries not to think of Hux dying at the merciless Ottomans’ hands.

April. The French army’s advance into the captured province of Alsace is slowed by their defeat at Hartmannswillerkopf. After the sinking of the RMS _Falaba_ at the end of March, with an American citizen aboard, there are rumours that the United States may now enter the war. Charlie Chaplin has a new film out, which Finn and Rey persuade Ben to come into town with them and see on Rey’s day off. The two of them seem to enjoy themselves but as soon as they step outside into the weak springtime sunshine Ben cannot recall a single word of the film. They stop in at the bookshop for Ezra Pound’s new book of poems — Finn’s eyes light up, he and Rey bend eagerly over it, fingers scanning each line. Ben goes round the shop, picking up every book Hux has mentioned, even in passing, in his letters, and then when Rey asks if he’s ready to go, he puts them down in an unceremonious heap without purchasing one.

(The next day he is overcome with missing him and spends every shilling of that month’s Oxford pocket-money on the books, even the ones he already owns. Alone in his room he touches their covers with fearful fingers and pores over the pages as if they hold the incantation that will bring him home for good.)

Zeppelins bomb London and the coast again, and the family draw the miles inland to Northampton around them like a blanket; but still they watch the skies every morning, pull blackout curtains down every night. One week after the second raid Rey’s face goes pale when reading the paper over breakfast (she still seizes it first, an old habit that no-one can bring themselves to remind her is now unnecessary). The Germans, she tells them in a small, lost voice, have brought a new kind of weapon to Ypres. They have brought a kind of gas that chokes men to death and drowns them in their own blood as they claw at their throats for air. They have charted a new circle of hell.

As the others gasp, frown, bite their lips, worry amongst themselves — what will this mean for the rest of the war, is this the end of the world as we know it — Ben’s mind goes completely blank. He feels detached, reeling through space. When he comes back to himself, heart sent running, he calculates furiously, thinking back to Hux’s last letter. It arrived here yesterday, the twenty-first, dated the nineteenth, and in it — short page, few lines — he had said they were fighting for control of something called Hill 60. He did not say whether they had achieved their goal, because their battalion had been pulled out of the line on the night he was writing and was heading into reserve. There was naked relief in these words, and, reading about the battle in the paper, Ben understood why. 

But now this. This new weapon, this new evil. Where is Hux?

By all accounts he should be safe, resting behind the lines. The newspaper offers gruesome accounts of men foaming at the mouth, faces contorted in agony, tearing their throats and lungs apart with their screaming before falling to the ground, never to rise again. What if he isn’t safe? What if at the last moment someone in charge decided Hux’s men were still needed, and instead of removed to safety they were subjected to _this?_ Ben’s eyes fix on the photograph of one dead gassed man and he is gripped with a panic, certain it’s Hux, before it comes to him that the man’s hair is dark and he is dressed in French uniform. 

He is supposed to go back to school in three days. Staring at the dead man, seeing Hux’s face like a ghost’s over his own, Ben knows that he cannot. If their separation is driving him mad (by now he is almost certain that it is), then he will lose his mind at home instead. 

“Mama, I want to stay home.”

They are alone in the library; everyone else has gone to bed. Leia, Ben knows, likes to come down and put her feet up, read a book or write letters, after her cocoa-rounds and before bed: near eleven, when the house is settling down and she can relish in some peace and quiet after another hectic hospital day. And indeed he found her there perhaps half an hour ago; she greeted him warmly, invited him to sit with her, offered him the last cup of tea from the pot she’d brewed for herself. He’d accepted, and taken up a book in order to feign reading while in fact working up the nerve to announce his wishes to her. 

When he does, now, his mother looks up and frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to go back to school.”

Leia removes her spectacles, letting them drop to hang from the fine gold chain around her neck. She hates having to wear them, and indeed, looks more like herself without them, her dark eyes still as sharp as a much younger woman’s. “Well, why not?” she asks pragmatically, although Ben detects a weariness in her tone. 

Ben flushes. He doesn’t want to explain himself, aware of how juvenile his true reasons are: _I’m too sad to go to school, Mama. Let me stay in bed today._ “I feel like I’m wasting my time,” he blurts instead. “And your money. I’m not doing well in my classes, and I’m not happy at school.”

“I thought you liked it there,” Leia interrupts. “In your letters it always seemed like things were fine.”

“I wasn’t always being honest.” Ben looks down, ashamed. 

“You aren’t doing well with your studies? Even with Hux’s tutoring?”

The unexpected mention of his name feels like a slap. Ben flinches. “No.”

“Well, Ben, I can’t say I’m not surprised,” Leia muses. “And disappointed. I thought things were going so well; and you know it was difficult for Luke to secure your place…”

“I know,” Ben cuts her off, desperate. “I’m sorry, Mama, believe me. But I can’t. I can’t go back.”

“Benjamin.” Leia’s frown deepens. “You’re being ungrateful. I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.”

“It is, Mama.” He recognises a grim echo of his and Hux’s conversation about the front. “I promise I’m being honest. I’m miserable there. I’d rather be at home. Look — you’re all so busy here. I could help out,” he suggests, fumbling guiltily for justification. “I can do whatever needs doing. I’ll make use of myself. Just please don’t make me finish the year.”

“Your education has always been so important to me, and to your father,” Leia responds, unwilling to acquiesce. “And I thought you held it in the same regard. Will you ever go back to school? If you’ve left Oxford once, I don’t think they’ll look too kindly on you if you ever decide to come crawling back.”

“Oxford isn’t for me,” Ben insists. “I don’t want to finish with a degree in English, and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to. I’ve been looking at other schools — art schools — that’s what I really want to do. After the war, maybe, I’ll go somewhere else — I’m thinking about the Slade, in London —”

“After the war,” Leia repeats, hawk-eyed.

“Yes. Yes.” Ben bites his lip. “I don’t like being a student right now.”

At this, something changes in Leia’s face; some understanding seems to dawn. “Did something happen at Oxford?” she asks, and her words have lost their relentlessness.

Ben hangs his head. To his shame he feels his throat growing tight. He nods. Haltingly, he explains everything: the taunts and abuse he has endured from the other students; the incident with the pillows; finally, unable to meet her eyes as he mumbles the words, he tells Leia about Peter Hahn. 

“That was wrong of you,” she says, once he has finished. “Very wrong, Ben, and if anything else had happened to him, I could see no way to excuse your actions. You — and he — are lucky that someone else came across him when they did. But…” She sighs, rubbing her temples. “In some strange way I understand your motivations. You felt like you were being treated the same way as him, but with less reason. You were angry and confused — and after all that happened, I can see why. Why didn’t you tell me when this was going on?”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Ben says feebly, and Leia exhales.

“I’m your mother,” she says. “It’s my job to worry. And more than that — to make sure you’re all right, which it sounds like you aren’t, and haven’t been for some time.” She reaches to take his hand, rubbing her thumb over the back of it. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?” she asks gently.

Ben shakes his head, slowly. He thinks of Hux, and misses him so badly he feels he will scream.

“Well, I won’t force you to finish the year,” Leia decides. “But I expect you to fully pitch in at home. Early mornings, late nights, doing whatever work Rey can find for you — and there will be plenty.”

“I will,” Ben agrees at once, overwhelmed with relief. The prospect of long, labour-intensive days is a welcome one; perhaps he will become so occupied with war-work that he will have less time to worry, just the way Luke had hoped Rey would when the boys first left. “I’ll do anything; I won’t complain,” he promises. “Thank you.”

He starts work that night. Rey is thrilled to have a new “orderly” to take some of the load off her nurses, and puts him on clean-up duty right away; he follows the girls on their dressing-changing rounds and takes the (dirty, often stinking, gruesomely-hued) old bandages away to be burned, saving the nurses extra trips between patients. Ben spends all of night-shift feeling queasy, assaulted by all manner of sights, smells, and fluids — but he falls so quickly into the rhythm of the work, and is so busy trying to maintain a hold on the contents of his stomach, that he hardly has time to fret over Hux and his whereabouts. When at last he is released (the hours have passed in a blur; he is shocked to see that it is almost three-thirty in the morning), he falls into bed, wonders briefly if a letter will arrive tomorrow, and is asleep almost at once. 

Soon enough he settles into a routine. He rises early, breakfasts with whomever among the nurses and the family are awake, and helps out wherever he is needed; this could be anything from taking his bicycle into town to pick up a new shipment of supplies, or else refilling the patients’ water glasses and making polite conversation with those who are awake and talking. 

Now that they are not only a convalescent home, the scope and severity of the men’s injuries vary wildly.  Ben has seen men missing limbs, missing eyes, missing ears and parts of faces. Some of them are kind and quiet, thanking the nurses or Ben when they adjust their pillows or bring them a book they asked for; still others are jovial and laughing, pleased to be out of the line and out of the hospital and safe and relaxing at last, joking with their physical therapists and serenading the nurses with soldiers’ drinking songs. 

And then there are others, who are sullen and silent during the day, their eyes dull and dark like a caged thing’s. At night, these are the ones who scream. 

Ben helps them as best he can, sitting by their bedsides and whispering awkward comfort, trying not to see Hux in their faces. The first time one of them dies after Ben has started his work, he finds himself staring at the corpse for what must be whole minutes, before shaking himself from his horrified trance and going to fetch someone who will know what to do with the body. When he finishes his shift and goes up to bed, he finds himself kept awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, the dead man’s face all he can see when he closes his eyes. 

When he is not working he rides. He takes one of the horses, no matter the weather, and retraces his and Hux’s old trail-ride routes; the ground is still frozen in places, and elsewise muddy, but one day he goes out to the meadow and dismounts, spreads his jacket on the ground. He lies down on the cold grass and thinks of summer. He stares up at the cloudy sky, the pale halo of the sun, and wonders what Hux sees when he looks up from the war. 

He pulls out his sketchbook and draws him, draws him, draws him. Sometimes his features blur into those of the dead and wounded men Ben has seen. Every night he looks at the photograph Hux sent him for his birthday and stares at it as if to wish it into flesh. 

A Field Service postcard arrives in the last week of the month and Ben nearly weeps with relief. Everything is crossed-out with perfect straight lines but for the blessed, pre-printed phrases, _I am quite well; I have received your letter dated 10_ _ th _ _; letter follows at first opportunity._ The card is dated 23 April, three days ago now, and Hux has signed it in his bureaucrat’s hand. It is the hand of a man who is truly well, surely, for a madman’s hand would tremble, and look how straight are the strokes of his pen. From this conjecture Ben takes all the solace he can. 

For the first time in months he allows himself to dream of spring, of having Hux home again — walking in the garden as the trees flower into new life; bicycling up the hill to gaze down on the village below. Spending secret nights in Hux’s room, and coming to know one another again, putting the winter’s strangeness behind them. With every day Ben convinces himself more and more that their last meeting had not really been the way that it was. 

April, closing. Ben officially withdraws from Oxford and feels himself breathing deeper once the last paper is signed. The French re-take Hartmannswillerkopf. In the Hague, the Women’s Peace Conference is held, and Rey’s smile returns in full force when she reads the news to them at breakfast. She and Finn are blissful; she and the baby are well. The Royal Navy land at Gallipoli and Hux is not among them. He writes — he is safe. The days are getting longer; against all odds, the spring has come again.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr [here](http://huxes.tumblr.com).


	15. Chapter 15 + Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for battle violence, minor gore/wounding, and **major character deaths, plural, one of which is a suicide.**

* * *

 

In the early morning, it is the larks. Their serenade greets the men as they wake before first light for stand-to, as they climb wearily up the fire-step to begin a new day’s work: _Good morning; you’re still alive._ The dawns are lighter every day, the sky painted in exquisite shades of purple and pink that contrast queerly with the skeletal trees and rat-ridden landscape below. And between the hiss and thud of shells there is lark-song.

In the evening: nightingales. As the men creep out from hiding (turned into rats themselves) to dig and fix and wire and raid, the birds’ haunting song mingles with the sound of bullets and provides eerie company. They sing funeral-songs for the dead men dragged back from No-Man’s Land and buried behind their own lines; they sing premature elegies for the men who bury them, who know full well that tomorrow night it could be them face-down in the mud. Hux — who sleeps each night with the spectres of the German boy, Fairley, and Quinn for company — does not need a reminder.

Frezenberg. A push is coming; they can feel it. Certain frowns and whispers at HQ, a discomfiting quietness from the enemy lines. The Allies know themselves to be surrounded, outnumbered three to one. Murmurs muster for days, and on the eighth of May they spill over, into a rain of shells at dawn.

The trench is already awake, and just — 5.30. Stand-to has hardly finished when the first mortars are hurled. “Eggs!” shouts someone — down the trench, “Crumps!” — there can be no doubt, the bombardment has begun. Hux finds himself a funk-hole, hunkers down, methodically cleans his gun. Once the heavy artillery finish their pummelling, the infantrymen will go over the top. The same today as yesterday, and the last time, and every miserable, bloody battle-day before. _And what is it all for?_ he wonders, dully, rote. There is no use asking anymore.

The Canadians are first into the fray. No-one knows why — there are few of them, and by day’s end there will be fewer. When the bombardment finally dies down, the infantry attack begins, around nine in the morning; wave after wave of men go over, and almost none come back. By noon, Hux hears, the battalions of the PPCLI are being led by sergeants, so many officers have been killed. Finally the word comes: the line is breaking apart, and the English are to be dispatched as reinforcements.

“Line up,” Hux calls to his men, and they make their way to the fire-step again. The noise of the battle is deafening, they can hardly hear him as he blows his whistle and counts them off, sends them line-by-line over the top. Some faces are grim, some are green; some are excited, bloodthirsty. These are the newest men. Either they will not last long or their expressions won’t.

The last line goes over. Hux steps into place beside them, and, at his nod, they hurl themselves up the ladder and into the mêlée.

(He had not thought that by this point, after having been out here for nine months, he would still find battle exciting, would still feel the same surge of adrenalin — a raw bolt of power and an almost animal lust — as he cocks his gun or makes a thrust with his bayonet; but he does. He cannot deny that he does. He has long ceased to wonder if he is mad or sick. No-one cares out here, if it helps the war be won.)

They fight. They kill. Hux, at one point, throws himself between a German and one of his own men, and cracks the enemy soldier over the head with the butt of his rifle before he can stab Mayville through the heart. They blaze a bloody trail through the German forces and they patch the gaps in the line. All day in battle; their feet hurt; they wade through mud, their guns jam with the filth, the lice eat them alive. This is what victory feels like.

By the time dark falls, the right side of the line has been secured. The Canadians have lost two machine-guns and more men than anyone wants to count. The battlefield, at last, goes silent, but for the birdsong and the pitiful cries of wounded and dying men. Just before midnight they withdraw, going back below the earth. They are in new trenches, Hux barely sees them, but he counts his men and finds with shock that all of them are still alive.

“We won,” says Kitteridge, who was first blooded the night Hux killed the German boy and whose soft young face has hardened since then. “We held them off.”

“We won today,” Hux reminds him, accepting a cup of tea from the orderly-officer when he hands them around. The men are seated around a tiny table in the trench with the Canadians, none of whom are speaking, many of whom are weeping. “One battle. The war’s not over yet.”

“You saved my life today, sir,” Mayville points out. His eyes are as wide now as they had been when he stood frozen in front of the German. “That means something.”

“Yes,” pipes up Matthews, a newer boy. “We’re alive, aren’t we? That’s something to celebrate.”

He speaks with the optimism that all the old hands have forgotten. Hux looks at him. It would be easy to dismiss his words — they have made no concrete gains, they have brought the conflict no closer to its conclusion. They have lost so many: Hux looks to the Canadians, to their sergeant staring straight ahead with his head in his hands; to his men’s numb faces, the layer of dirt streaked through with tears. These are not the faces of victors.

But this long hard day is over. They will rest.

Hux smiles. “Yes,” he says. “We’re alive.” He raises his glass in a silent toast, and the others, whether thinking of the living or the dead, join in. They drink.

A cold supper is scrounged up. When Hux sees his men, his youngest men, sitting with the Canadians, urging them to eat, speaking to them gently, he reconsiders his assumption that the war has ruined the lot of them. _Perhaps it’s only me after all._ He pushes back his chair and goes to find paper and pen.

Despite the air of mourning in the trench, when Hux sits down to tell Ben of the battle, he cannot stop his tone from slipping into one of jubilation.

_Ben,_

_I am alive, I am alive, I am alive. We had a hellish day today, our side has lost too many men to think about — a whole Canadian company was decimated, I think they have four officers left alive — but my men and I are miraculously unharmed. A few small injuries but nothing we cannot bear._

_When we went over the top this morning I couldn’t help but think that this_ would _be the day something happened to me — our last likely day of action before rest, and then home to you later this month — the irony would have been too cruel to bear. But the gods have not chosen me as their plaything after all. I raise my glass to them._

_I miss you, Ben. I have been tormented by the way I treated you the last time we were together, the things I said in anger. I was tired, so tired, there has never been a weariness like we soldiers know — but still, that doesn’t excuse my words. I was needlessly cruel and I am sorry. Please believe me. Believe that I have thought of nothing else but you each day since we were parted, and that, had I the chance, I would relive those few days in London and never hurt you like I did. I’ll make it up to you this time._

_About two more weeks — that is all they have told me vis-à-vis my leave. I’ll send a wire when I am leaving France; I wish I could give you more notice than that, but alas. Wait for me._

_I remain incontrovertibly_

_Yours,_

_Hux._

Hux sits back. He smiles. He will make things right with Ben. The springtime will make things right. They will be as they were again; perhaps the war will end this summer, and they will truly recapture their idyll. He allows himself to dream.

“I’m for bed,” he tells the few men who still sit round the table, sipping slowly at their rationed rum. The Canadians have all gone to grieve in private. One of them, clearly needing to be useful, has volunteered to take the men’s letters down the line, to the nearest full platoon, whence the post will be collected next morning; he waits only on Hux, and when handed his letter, disappears.

Hux surveys the familiar faces of his men and feels an unexpected tug of emotion. He clears his throat: “You fought well today, my lads. I’m proud to be your leader.”

They look up. A few smile — Mayville, Green, who have been with him since the beginning. Many of them still look lost, the noise of shellfire no doubt still ringing in their ears. Hux hopes his words have made their way into their heads, perhaps to be remembered at some low-spirited time, and bring hope.

“Goodnight, sir,” says Matthews. “I think I speak for all of us when I say we’re proud to serve you.” He looks around him, and the other men nod their agreement. “I think they should reward you for today.”

“The DSO,” agrees his friend Tibbett. “At the least.”

“I hardly think…” Hux trails off, biting his lip to keep from grinning like a bashful child when the others call “Hear, hear!”, pounding their glasses on the table. “Well, speak to my superiors,” he suggests, around the sudden lump in his throat, “and we’ll see. Get some rest tonight. You deserve it.”

“Night, sir.”

“Night, sir!”

He heads down to the dugout with an absurd smile on his face. Vanity has no place in the trench, but all the same —  _imagine coming home to Ben with a Distinguished Service medal on my chest…._

He beds down in the officers’ bunks and settles in gratefully for sleep. He knows not what the morning will bring — more mud, more battle, more blood — but for now, he is safe, and he will be home to Ben in no time. He falls asleep in minutes, more quickly than he has in months, and for once his ghosts leave him alone. He dreams only of Ben.

 

* * *

 

The ambush comes in the darkest hours.

Four, five German men, the last of their platoons. From the end of the battle they played dead: they have risen again. They descend on the trench that was once theirs and let hell loose upon it.

Hux is awoken by the screaming. At once he reaches for and finds his revolver, before he is even fully awake — already he knows is that something is terribly wrong. Warm hazy visions of Ben and summer disappear into thin air as he throws himself from bed and down the traverse to the main trench. Thank God they all sleep in their boots.

All he can think, as he hurries hell-bent down the corridor, is how foolish they were, how foolish _he_ was. Drunk on their success and their grief and their black-treacle rum they had not thought to post guards. Hux should have done it. _I should have stood sentry myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid,_ and now they pay.

By the time he rounds the corner he knows he is too late. Three of his men are already slumped and bleeding on the floor, their young eyes empty: Kitteridge, Mayville, Green. A sinister mirror of that raid so long ago. He knows without checking that they are dead, beyond his help. There is screaming farther down the trench. He says a prayer and leaves them.

More dead in the corridor along the way. Tibbett, Carlton, Irish. They survived the day only to die tonight. Hux passes them, following the sounds of death. As he listens, he hears another scream — it is cut short by a sudden shot. Another man lost. Another man he has failed. He breaks into a run.

Light in the dugout at the other end of the trench. Five Germans, laughing, their uniforms bloody. They speak to one another, toss harsh jests like grenades back and forth. Another body is slumped on the ground at the feet of the man who must be their leader, and they are laughing at it, at the look of terror on the man’s face. Matthews, the youngest.

They do not see Hux come in. He creeps in, pistol raised — he has almost made it, he is behind the closest man, lining his gun up with the man’s nape — and then his comrade sees him, and gives a shout of alarm, pointing. Hux’s target whips round, but he is too slow: the bullet is through his neck before he has even turned to face him. He falls.

Hux steps over the body and holds up his gun, faced now by four Germans with their pistols trained on him. They are not laughing any longer.

“Stand down,” one of them barks in German. “We will shoot you like we did the others.”

Hux’s finger is taut on the trigger. He has one of them in his sights, and if he fires now, he will kill him, he thinks — but the chance of only wounding him, or of the brute dodging the bullet, is still there. A failure will not win him any favours, nor more time. And even if his aim was true, the rest would be on him in an instant. Perhaps they will spare him; but the thought of being their prisoner makes bile rise in his throat.

“I know,” Hux replies calmly, in the same language. “I am not afraid of you.”

“No?” Another laughs, and steps closer to him. “Perhaps you should be.”

Hux does not lower his gun. He makes no reply. They circle him like feral dogs; his options are narrowing.

“You don’t scare me,” Hux repeats.

As his finger tightens on the trigger, he has a sudden memory of teaching Ben to shoot this summer. How close they’d been standing. Ben’s bashful request for aid. His forearms in Hux’s hands, the feel of veins and muscles under the warm skin. He had almost toppled into Hux when the gun recoiled, and had turned to him in unabashed glee. Ben told him later that he had asked for help on purpose, to have Hux take him in his arms.

 _I will see him again. I will hold him again._ He squeezes the trigger.

When the shot comes, it is not from in front of him, but behind.

The bullet leaves Hux’s gun and enters the neck of the German before him. At the same time, a star explodes in his torso, and he bends double and falls to the ground. Pain screams through every nerve in his body. The man he shot falls, too, blood fountaining from the mess of his throat, and his comrades, shouting, rush to him.

Hux feels an agony the likes of which he had not thought possible. He cannot even hold himself up on his knees: he crumples, his face hitting the damp, hard-packed dirt. He registers dimly that the blunt impact will leave bruises — and then, that he will likely never see them. Already his vision is spotting black. He closes his eyes. Time slows.

The man he shot ceases his terrible gurgling screaming. His comrades are speaking in low, anguished voices. They seem to have forgotten him. Hux wants to reach for his gun and finish them off, take as many of them with him as he can; he swears he extends his arm for the pistol, discarded on the ground, but his fingers close on empty air, and he finds his hand still by his side. He tries to move again —  _it’s so close, it’s so close, it’s right there_ —but fails. His strength is leaching from him, red.

The Germans collect their fallen friend and heft his body between them to carry him out of the trench. They step over Hux; warm blood drips down onto his face. He hears, as if from very far away, the sound of their boots hurrying down the corridor. He is alone; he is safe.

He hopes that, when Ben hears, he will think that he died bravely. _Let him remember me that way. There is no-one else who will._

The thought of Ben drives a knife into his wound and twists it. Hux squeezes his eyes still tighter shut and hopes the quiet will swallow him soon.

But now, a new sound — shouting, the pounding of boots coming closer, not going away. A shot — another — screams, and the thud of bodies to the ground. Something within Hux revives: _Help?_ He thinks to scream. He cannot. But it does not matter, no, no, for none of this is happening; obviously he is fading away, hallucinating rescue.

He opens his eyes again. There — the moon, and all the stars, above him. The night air is warm and gentle, drying the blood on his face. The other noises, the sounds of hope, have faded. All is still and quiet: the only sound now is birdsong.

How the nightingales sing.

 

* * *

 

Ben receives Hux’s letter on the evening of May thirteenth. As he reads it, he nearly cries with joy: Hux is alive, he is well, he sounds better than he has. And he is coming home. Ben calculates: two weeks when he wrote it means just over a week from now. He folds and stows the letter but he swears he can still see it, glowing in the dark.

Rey and Finn are leaving for their honeymoon in America soon, on the twenty-first of this month. They will tour the East Coast and arrive in Philadelphia for the first convention of the League to Enforce Peace on June seventeenth. Leia has asked them to drop in on some of her friends in New York and they have happily agreed to do so; they will also visit Han’s grave. After the convention they will spend the rest of the summer in Florida at the Damerons’ home, with Sara and Kenneth joining them for the whole of August.

Rey had protested taking such a long sojourn, time away from her soldiers and what has become quite decidedly _her_ hospital, but her girls are more than capable and have gently pressured her into taking time for herself. She needs rest, the baby does too; she needs time to find closure and move on. (She was finally convinced when Caroline sent a wire from London sternly telling her to go.)

The middle days of the month are both slow and hectic — Rey and Ben are working long hours, as ever; Finn’s physical therapy is finally winding down, his strength returning at last. In every spare moment Rey is rushing back and forth all over the house, setting things aside to later be shoved into trunks, before hurrying back out onto the wards. Ben, for his part, although kept busy by hospital life (and feeling his melancholy slowly lifting, if only because he has no time for it), always has time to hurry and greet the postman, waiting every day for the promised telegram that still has not come.

He does not worry (or tries not to.) Something tells him that everything will be all right. He devours the papers as frantically as anyone, and although — in the wake of the _Lusitania_ disaster, which has stolen all the headlines since it happened last week — nothing much has been said of Hux’s men for a few days now. They had some kind of minor success at Frezenberg; many more words were devoted to the tragedy of the Canadian PPCLI — he feels confident that Hux is unharmed and out of danger. He must be, for he is coming home soon. The casualty lists do not prove him wrong.

 

* * *

 

Finally the day arrives: Rey and Finn leave next morning. There is a great pile of trunks and suitcases at the front door, growing ever larger as servants scurry down from upstairs toting still more: garment-bags and hat-boxes and steamer-trunks and cases, and Finn’s medical things and their travelling hats and bags and coats.

Rey is in the middle of it all, directing the flurry of activity — “Please, Elsie, we’ll take the smaller case, we don’t need that one — and oh, Cecil, be a dear and fetch Finn’s green waistcoat, he said he’d like to have it” — and so it is Rey who first hears the doorbell when it sounds.

She has just sent Cecil upstairs, and the few other servants are engaged with packing; Luke is in town, and Leia is visiting Winnifred, and Ben is on the wards. Rey hurries to the door, frowning (everyone trembles at the sound of their doorbells, these days) — but the relief that comes over her when there is no telegram-boy on the stoop lasts only a second.

Instead she finds the earl, Brendon Huxley the elder, looking stricken. In his hand is clutched a telegram. Yellow paper framed in black.

Rey’s heart plummets. _Ben. Oh, Ben._

“Good evening, sir,” she whispers to Hux’s father, gripping the door-frame. “Won’t — won’t you come in?”

The earl shakes his head, his eyes fixed on some point in the air, unseeing. Mutely he holds out the crumpled telegram. Rey takes it: she can do nothing else.

She unfolds it. She scans the lines, knowing already what she will see there, and as she reads tears well in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, sir,” she whispers, looking up when she’s finished, her lower lip trembling. “Oh, I am so…”

The earl’s gaze shifts. At the same time, a voice from behind her: “Is that the door?”

Ben’s voice is bright and hopeful — he has been waiting for this.

Numb, overflowing with pity, Rey holds out her hand.

 _His leave, it must be his leave,_ Ben thinks, heart pounding, a smile beginning to bloom on his face — but then he takes in Rey’s expression, and looks behind her to the man standing on the threshold, and he knows that Hux will never be taking his longed-for leave.

Never again will he disembark at Victoria, greatcoat on and bag in hand; never again will he scan the crowd for Ben’s face, and flare to life when he sees him; never again will he spend the night in rented rooms, in Ben’s arms…but all these thoughts come later.

For now, moving as if in a dream, Ben reaches out a hand to take the telegram from Rey. Slowly, unwilling, he unfolds it, and forces his eyes to the page.

DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT MAJ BRENDON HUXLEY JR HAS BEEN KILLED IN ACTION AT FREZENBERG 13 MAY.

Ben closes his eyes. The floor tilts under his feet. _No,_ he thinks simply. _No._

“How?” he says, hoarsely.

“I don’t know,” Hux’s father responds. “This is all I received. No more.”

 _A mistake,_ Ben’s mind posits hopefully; he has heard of such things, men badly wounded but not dead, their deaths reported in error by well-meaning superiors, hoping to alert the family quickly and spare them the agonising wait…but he knows, somehow, just as Rey had said he would, that this is not what has happened. He is gone, and gone for good.

_I should have felt it. I should have felt it when he died._

“Will we know?” Ben asks. “Will they tell us?” His throat is tight, his words come out choked.

Brendon Huxley shakes his head, slowly. “No way to know. They might.”

Ben looks up. Their eyes meet. Ben sees his own pain — the pain that wracks him in silent waves, the pain that weakens his knees and threatens to crush his chest — mirrored in the older man’s eyes. The worst kind of understanding passes between them.

Rey, hovering, looking ready to burst into tears, now comes to Ben’s side and presses his arm. “Ben,” she says, quiet, distraught, “sit down — come — and Lord Huxley, please, stay if you’d like…anything you need, anything at all…”

“No,” the earl says stiffly. He swallows, shakes his head. “No. I can’t stay. I only had to…” He glances at the telegram, still in Ben’s hand. “I must go.”

Ben takes a seat in the armchair to which Rey shepherds him. He hears her bidding a sorrowful farewell to the earl, hears the front door shutting behind him as he goes; but he hears distantly, as if from underwater. Around them, the servants helping Rey pack have of course witnessed the scene, and frozen in tableau around them; but as the door closes they reanimate, and flock around Rey, exclaiming and murmuring, casting anxious glances at Ben where he sits. He does not look round.

Rey dismisses them all. She goes to Ben’s side, sits down next to him, and takes up his hand. Their eyes meet: tears spill down Rey’s cheeks, and wordless sympathy pours from her gaze. Ben’s hand rests limply in hers like a dead thing. _Gone, gone, gone._ He turns away from her tears.

They must stay this way for some time. When Luke and Leia get home, they find the bustling house quiet. “Rey? Ben?” Leia calls, suddenly worried; and when she enters the parlour she knows at once that something is wrong. When her son looks up at her, blank-eyed, she knows what it is.

“Oh, Ben,” she whispers, and comes at once to kneel by his side. “Oh, Ben.” She turns to her niece, not sure if Ben is capable of answering. “When?”

But: “A week ago,” he responds, in an empty, barren voice. “At Frezenberg.”  _A week. Gone for a week and I didn’t know, I kept living._

“I’m so sorry,” Leia whispers. Luke stands at the entrance to the parlour, gazing down in sorrow at the miserable scene. Rey stands and hurries into her father’s arms, muffling a sob in his shoulder; and Leia reaches up to stroke her son’s cheek. Tears well in her eyes, but Ben’s stay dry. He accepts her caress but remains immobile, as if turned to stone.

“I’m sorry,” Ben says after a moment, sounding disturbed. He stands, abruptly, and makes to leave.

“Wait,” his mother calls after him; but it’s too late, he’s halfway up the stairs, the yellow telegram flashing in his fist.

Leia watches as he disappears. She stands from where she had knelt, pulling herself up with the arm of the chair. Her bones ache, her body feels heavy. She goes to her brother, and silently Luke rubs her back, Rey still nestled under his other arm. The three of them look at one another, and mourn without words those who are missing.

Upstairs, alone, Ben weeps, the telegram clutched in his hand.

 

* * *

 

Millennium House in the spring of 1915 now takes on the same aspect of the Organa-Solos’ New York home in the spring of 1914. In the next few days, for Ben’s sake, the house grows muted, hushed; its occupants, even the rowdy soldiers, tiptoe around, speak only in whispers. The air itself seems fragile. Outside, the world is in bloom — the sun shines fiercely; the birds trill their good mornings; the orchard springs into fragrant, blossoming life — but inside, it is as winter.

For the next three days Ben’s bedroom door remains closed. He emerges for meals at irregular hours, when the rest of the family is away or asleep, but he finds he cannot eat. He returns to his bedroom and stays shut-up for hours: opening the books Hux lent him or loved and running his fingers over the words; paging through his sketchbooks until tears mar his vision and the drawings dissolve into blurs; holding the bundle of Hux’s letters, cradling it to his chest, but not daring to read even one.

On the fourth day a letter is delivered to Brendon Huxley, along with a battered parcel. He makes the same journey to Millennium House. Ben is called down from his room. For a moment, when Rey knocked tentatively on his door and told him the earl had returned, he felt a cruel spike of hope — but it soon was gone. He rises from bed and goes downstairs.

“Keep it,” Huxley says, handing him the envelope. The parcel is on the floor at his feet: wrapped in brown paper, and muddied, damaged, alien _-_ looking, so out-of-place on the spotless foyer floor. Huxley himself looks a sight: his beard is unshaven, greying in places; his nose is redder than usual; a scent of liquor hangs about him like a cloud of poison gas. The bags under his eyes and the wrinkles in his once-fine clothes evince his sleepless nights. Ben feels a grim empathy.

“You’re certain? His — his things, too?” Ben forces out the words. He glances down at the package with a sense of fear, foreboding. He knows what to expect but dreads seeing it nonetheless. _All that’s left._

The earl nods. “I don’t want it,” he says, his voice hard. “Any of it.” Pain flashes in his eyes. Ben understands.

“Thank you,” he says, ineptly. He accepts the letter and holds it for a moment, bracing himself. The slim envelope feels heavy in his hand. He thinks for a moment to shove it back —  _no, no, I made a mistake, I can’t do this, if I open it it’s over, he’s never coming home._ But the earl has turned and left before he can shout to him to stop. The door shuts heavily behind him. The parcel remains.

“Do you want my help?” Rey asks him, anxious. With Poe, she did not have to do this: there was nothing left.

Ben won’t make her do it now; he knows already what a horror it will be. He shakes his head. “No, Rey. Thank you.”

He slips the letter into his pocket, and then goes to the parcel. It’s dirty — as he lifts it into his arms, mud flakes off onto his sleeve, leaving filthy smears behind — and it smells. Hux has described this smell, this stink of death, in his letters, but to read about it and to be faced with it are different things entirely. Ben grimaces.

The smell wafts up as he stands, and Rey steps back, covering her mouth and nose with one hand. She makes a small sound as he turns around and walks past her, makes to reach for him, but he goes doggedly to the stairs and mounts them, as slowly as if the small package weighed tonnes.

In his room, he drops it on the Turkey carpet, shuts the door behind him, and then locks it for good measure. This is a private ritual. He draws the curtains to shut out the bright spring light — it feels insulting — and removes the letter from his pocket, lays it on the bed with care. He does not think he can open it yet.

He turns first to the package.

Kneeling, as if at prayer, he slices open the twine.

 _There is so little left,_ he thinks first, as he stares down at the parcel’s contents, the paper wrappings unfurling. A shirt. A vest. A package of cigarettes, half-empty; a handful of francs. Ben feels a pang as he picks up Hux’s pocket-watch, the heavy gold scratched and abraded. A razor. Boot-polish. Ordinary things. _His life._

He sets the bigger items aside. From the folds of the shirt — it must be a spare; it is cleaner than Ben would have expected, worn thin from re-washing — falls something. Ben picks it up.

An identity disc on a cord. Ben reads what is there: _Capt._ _B. A. Huxley, 3 rd N.N., C.E.  _These few numbers and letters purport to summarise him, to set him apart from the rest of the world, from the rest of the dead. They had not even recorded his promotion yet. Inadequate. Ben’s fist closes tight around the aluminium disc until it grows warm in his palm. He hangs the cord around his neck; the disc rests on his heart.

He turns back to the rest, Hux’s name, now, like a protective charm on his skin.

There: Hux’s tunic, folded neatly, the crown on the shoulder defiantly golden. The buttons with their little engraved castles, proud still, unknowing. The fabric is speckled here and there with mud, and creased with wear, but there is no visible damage, at least to the top half. The Sam Browne belt, weathered with use, lies beside the garment like a resting viper. Slowly, Ben reaches to pick up the tunic, unfold it.

He gasps when he sees it — and that gasp turns to a low, quiet keen, pain given voice.

The tunic is crusted with blood from the fold-line down. There sits a bullet-hole, black-singed and evil, crowned in an aureole of browning blood. Ben knows now how it happened.

His hands let go the tunic and drop it back onto the paper and he folds over into himself, his head between his knees, his arms coming to wrap around his shins as if to make him small enough to disappear. He takes long, shaking breaths even as his vision spots black and his stomach threatens to roil over. He stays there a moment, or perhaps an hour, a year, rocking back and forth, trying to keep himself from crying out or falling apart.

He feels he could: he feels right now that he could disintegrate, simply cease to exist, _and would it matter, anymore?_

He raises his head from the shield of his arms and looks blankly again at the package. He thinks of whoever assembled its contents: imagining them folding the tunic just so, observing the semblance of normality they’d created, but knowing all along the horror that would be revealed as soon as it was unfolded…and for a moment he hates them, and the illusion they so cruelly permitted.

_I need to know the rest._

How? When? By whom? What did he look like as he died, where was he — was it instantaneous, in a trench? Was he in hospital first? Was he alone, or was he surrounded by the men who had fought with him, for him, as brothers?

Ben gets up from the floor as slowly as if he’s aged sixty years. He goes to the bed, and picks up the letter, lying so innocently atop the covers. The envelope is slightly battered, as most from the front, and when he turns it over, it is open already. Brendon Huxley has read it, of course, and what he read was too painful for him to keep.

With hands that suddenly tremble, as if Ben himself had been in the front line —  _oh, and if only —_ he removes the letter from the envelope.

A single page. _It took one page for him to die,_ Ben thinks, and stares down at the flimsy missive with a kind of strange bemusement for a moment. Then he unfolds it, and begins to read the tight-packed script as carefully as if the words would sear his eyes.

 _Near F., France_  
14 May 1915  
  
My dear sir,

_It is my solemn duty to report to you the sad news of your son’s death here at F. two nights ago. Before the end, he requested that I be the one to inform you of the manner of his passing. This knowledge gives comfort to some and horror to others, so I leave it to you, sir, to decide for yourself whether you will hear it._

Ben has been duly warned. It is not too late to go back, to spare himself the horror of which this unknown soldier speaks. He reads on.

_The fighting had been going on for eight days when it finally began to die down on the thirteenth. Your son’s battalion had been dispatched to fill the gaps in the Canadians’ line after the immense losses they suffered, and they did so admirably. By nightfall it seemed as though the battle was finished; your son had lost not a man — but you will recall that I am writing now, and not one of his lads._

_In the early hours of the morning, when the line was quiet and the soldiers asleep, a few stragglers from the enemy side mounted a raid upon the Northamptonshires’ trench. A bloodbath soon ensued. I am told that nearly all of your son’s men had been killed by the time he arrived on the scene. Understand, sir, that this does not place any blame on him._

Ben closes his eyes. He does not want to read further; his eyes fight not to open; but he must. But he does.

_Major Huxley confronted the invaders, killing two of them. He was then shot in the stomach. Only moments later, the alarm having been raised by his men before their deaths, reinforcements arrived from down the line. By a stroke of good fortune, these miserable Huns were speedily removed by them; but by that time I am afraid it was too late._

_Your son was brought to the clearing station. He lay in semi-consciousness for upwards of half an hour as they hurried to treat him, but the damage was too great; he had already lost too much blood. But — resilient to the last — he held on longer than expected, and died two hours after the raid._

Ben finds he is sobbing now, in utter silence, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably. He takes hoarse, heaving breaths, his vision blurring, and forces himself to read the last lines of the letter.

_He was a brave man: braver than any I have ever known. May this knowledge bring you peace in your grief, and may God rest your son’s soul._

_Maj-Gen Alistair Snow_

_Commander, 1 st Division, British Expeditionary Force_

Ben is numb. His hands shake. Blindly, unthinking, he goes to his desk, where the oil-lamp stands unlit. He fumbles for matches, tries three times to strike one before he succeeds; he touches it to the wick and watches the lamp flare to life. He returns to the bed and picks up the letter.

He watches as the paper burns, until every word has turned to smoke.

Ash smears his hands, the desktop, but he does not care. He moves as if sleepwalking: returns to the parcel: gathers up the tunic again, and holds it to his chest. It feels heavy, now; it is more than cloth, more than itself.

Ben climbs into bed. His thoughts are screaming, his body is bowed in half with pain; and still somehow he falls asleep, the bloodied tunic cradled, empty, in his arms.

 

* * *

 

The funeral is set for Sunday, although there is no body to bury: it remains in Belgium with those of Hux’s men. The intervening days Ben spends in his room, sleeping most of the day. He has no more nightmares, for the worst of them has come true. He refuses food and company and feels himself slipping away, becoming less than a ghost: living a half-life, without him. He sits for hours staring at Hux’s photograph until he hardly recognises his face. He begins to formulate a plan.

Sunday it rains. Ben dresses in mourning black and walks down to Huxley Hall in the gloomy morning light. No-one else has been invited, he knows; who else would come? His family offered but he needs to do this alone.

Or not quite alone — the earl is there, and drunk. Hux’s former batman, Mitaka — now a footman again — has to support his master’s arm as they process out to the quiet corner of the lawn where the headstone has been laid. Brendon Huxley’s face is red and stony and his clothing is wrinkled and stained.

Ben stands beside him, hardly hearing the words that the vicar intones over the empty grave, and thinks how wretched it is, that they are the only ones left who loved him. This wreck of a man, hardly a father; and himself, Ben, a broken boy who has shattered now once and for all. _He deserved better than us._

The short service finishes. Ben lays flowers on Hux’s name in stone. The rain beats harder down. Mitaka approaches from his respectful distance to take the earl’s arm again; Ben sees with detachment that the younger man is crying and the older man is not. He puts a hand to his own cheek and finds it wet, but then that might be the rain. They walk back to the house in silence.

 _Tonight,_ Ben thinks, and feels no fear. He goes home comforted.

 

* * *

 

“Rey?” Ben knocks on her and Finn’s bedroom door after hearing her come up to bed. He hopes to find his cousin alone, and indeed, when she opens the door, she is.

“Ben,” Rey greets him, smiling tiredly. She puts a hand to the small of her back and opens the door wider: “Come in. What is it?” She speaks gently, in the voice that Ben recognises from last spring, only used around the recently bereaved.

She’s wrapped up in the same dressing-gown she’s always worn, the big flannel one of Finn’s, despite the warming spring nights. It’s open over her six-month belly, and as Ben steps inside, she picks up the cord and ties it shut.

“I’m sorry; you were going to bed,” Ben says. His voice feels rough with disuse. “But I just — I wanted to give you these.”

He holds out the books he’s brought with him, tucked under his arm. It’s a motley assortment: poetry, prose, a few plays; everything he has from Oxford, everything he’s read since Hux left.

Rey takes the stack, carefully, between both hands, and says, bemused, “But don’t you want to keep these?” She eyes one of the titles: “I thought Tolstoy was your favourite.”

“For the boat,” Ben explains hastily. “I’ve read all of them already, and you and Finn have a long trip ahead of you; I thought you might like some extra reading material.”

Rey’s face clears. “How kind!” She runs a finger down each of the spines, and comments delightedly, “Finn’s been looking for this — oh, and this one too, they didn’t have them in town — oh, thank you, Ben. We won’t have a dull moment.”

Ben dips his head, rocking awkwardly on his heels. “I’m glad you’ll make use of them.”

He watches as she goes to set them down on the vanity table, where another few volumes wait, either left there by Finn while he waited for Rey to dress, or waiting patiently to be packed with the rest of the luggage that’s strewn around the room.

“Thank you very much,” his cousin says again, coming back over to him and laying a hand on his arm. “How are you doing, Ben?” she asks, using that same tone of voice. (Ben realises that he rather despises it, and hopes he hasn’t been using it on Rey herself all this time.) “D’you need anything? A chat, a cup of tea?”

Ben almost laughs at the thought of either of those things even beginning to stitch up the hole that has been ripped in his life, in his heart. “No,” he tells her. “I’m all right, Rey, really.”

Rey raises her eyebrows.

“Well — I’m not, but I will be.” He doesn’t sound convincing, even to himself. “I promise.”

“You will,” Rey says. “You will. It’ll take time, of course it will — but one day, Ben, you’ll wake up and it won’t be sitting on your chest anymore. You’ll be able to breathe a little deeper, to smile, maybe even to laugh, without feeling like it’s an insult to his memory. But you won’t forget him,” she adds, softer. “He’s a part of you, and always will be. Nothing will take that away.” She touches his cheek.

Ben feels a lump swelling in his throat. “I have to go,” he says, and turns abruptly from her.

“Ben?”

He turns back.

“He loved you. I hardly knew him, but — but I know that much for certain.”

Ben swallows. “I know, too.”

Rey smiles. “Goodnight, Ben. I’m here if you need me.”

“Goodnight.” Ben shuts the door behind him, and makes it to his room before he starts to cry.

He doesn’t sleep that night. He reads every letter Hux wrote him from the front, whispering the tender words to himself, and then lines his pockets with them, feeling them close to his body. He still wears Hux’s identity-disc: the metal has been warmed to the same temperature as his skin.

When Ben has finished with the letters, the moon is high and the house is quiet. Everyone else is asleep. He’s ready.

He slips out the servants’ entrance and begins his long walk, the walk he made so many times with Hux by his side. He can almost feel his presence now: it brings him peace.

Huxley Hall is quiet, too. They have no butler, and the servants’ quarters are belowground; Hux had shown him once how eerily quiet it is below-stairs, crypt-like in the cool and damp. Ben wonders if the air makes poor Mitaka’s wounded shoulder ache: he has heard this can happen, sometimes.

Unheard, unnoticed, Ben makes his way upstairs. He pads down the hall to Hux’s bedroom, passing the master suite on the way; the door is ajar, and from inside drift the heavy snores of a drunkard. He hopes the earl will not wake. He places his hand on Hux’s doorknob and turns, slowly, pushing open the door with care so the hinges don’t squeak and give him away.

He lets the door drift shut behind him and sits down on Hux’s bed. He lights the lamp at the bedside, and in the soft glow he looks around, taking in the room. The sparely-decorated walls: one or two landscapes painted by his mother; a few awards from his schooldays, clumsily framed by a younger Hux himself. The armchair in the corner where Hux had once sat with Ben’s head between his thighs, his teeth digging into his lower lip to keep himself silent. The bookshelves — there are empty spaces, books tipped diagonally to rest against each other, where favourite volumes were cherry-picked to take to France.

This room is full of him, of them. Ben dips his hand into his trouser pocket and his fingers close around the key.

The top drawer of the bureau unlocks easily. The weight of the Webley is familiar in his hand, although he has never held it before. He can almost feel Hux’s hand atop his, his cool fingers guiding Ben’s: _There. Like that. Well done._

Tears come to Ben’s eyes, but he is calm. He strokes the pistol’s handle, grips it tighter. Holding a gun no longer frightens him. This is the coward’s way, but he will be brave.

“I love him,” he says aloud, to the empty room, to the ghosts of them. “I love him.”

He puts the Webley to his temple and closes his eyes. He can almost see Hux smiling.

 

* * *

 

At Millennium House, moments later: a frantic hammering on the front door. Cecil is pulled from his light sleep and, exclaiming to himself, proceeds to answer it. “What?” the old butler asks rudely, prepared to give a stern upbraiding to whichever of the village boys has decided to play a prank at this hour — but he stops short when he sees Mitaka, Huxley Hall’s fragile footman, swaying on the steps.

“Master Cecil,” the young man whispers, looking close to tears. “Please — please wake Her Ladyship.”

“What on earth is the matter?” Cecil shepherds Mitaka inside, conscious of the useless, wounded arm strapped across his body in a sling. The earl has kept him on as a footman no doubt at his son’s insistence, or out of sheer pity: how can he perform his tasks one-handed?

“Call Lady Leia,” Mitaka pleads, looking desperately at Cecil. _“Please.”_

Cecil, for once, is stunned into silence. He nods, once, twice, and hurries up the stairs as quickly as his old joints will let him.

Leia starts awake at Cecil’s knock, and when he calls, “My lady?”, her heart starts to pound. She throws on a dressing-gown and wrests open the door, and when she sees his pale, confused face, she begins to feel sick. She runs through a list in her head. “Rey?” she asks him, thinking of the baby, of the living nightmares she herself had suffered before Ben was born — but the butler shakes his head.

“Luke?” Another denial.

“Finn?” The minutest shake of the head.

Leia cannot bring herself to voice the final name. She steadies herself on the doorframe and then follows Cecil downstairs.

“Mitaka.” She greets the young man as if she had been expecting him, although her mind screams confusion. She cannot focus; nothing looks real, the walls are made of paper. “What’s wrong? What brings you here?”

“My master…” Mitaka looks green. Leia takes him by the elbow and leads him into the library, conscious that this gesture feels wrong. “My master was awoken a quarter of an hour ago,” the boy continues, shakily, once he has been ushered into a chair. “By — by a sound.” His lips press tight shut.

“Go on,” Leia presses. Her throat is dry.

“He saw a light on down the corridor, he said…he went to investigate…and then he shouted for me.” Mitaka’s eyes are filling with tears. “Oh, my lady, I am so sorry.”

“What _happened?”_ Leia’s voice is urgent, harsh.

“Major Huxley…” Mitaka is shaking. “Before he left, he gave your son his gun.”

“I don’t understand.” Leia’s voice is not her own. Everything around her acquires a sudden clarity, begins to glow too brightly. She blinks and blinks and still she cannot change the scene before her.

“My lady…” The footman raises his head to look at her, and his face, too, is unreal.

“I don’t understand,” Leia repeats, although it is sinking in, it has sunk in; she knows. She thinks she knew from the moment she saw Mitaka in the foyer. _It could only have ended like this._ She shakes her head again, again. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry.” Mitaka cannot raise his voice above a whisper. “I am so sorry.”

“Aunt Leia?” Rey, one hand on the banister and one hand on her belly, her brow creasing as she takes in the commotion in the foyer. She has been sleeping lightly since Poe’s death. Finn appears at her shoulder, rubbing his eyes, and together they hurry down the stairs, Finn supporting Rey with a hand around her waist. Luke, also awoken, follows them, and rushes to his sister’s side even before the children get there.

Rey’s voice trembles. “What’s happened? Aunt Leia, what’s wrong? Why is Lord Huxley’s footman here?” No-one will speak. Already Rey’s eyes begin to fill with tears. “Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?”

“Ben,” Leia says simply, and her voice breaks. She collapses into her brother’s arms, and she does not recognise the long, low wail as coming from her own throat until it starts to hurt, to tear, to bleed.

“Ben.”

 

* * *

 

## Epilogue: January 1916

“Can you lay the flowers, darling? Right there. Now let go. _There_ you are. Good girl!”

Rey stands from Poe’s grave and hoists the baby higher on her hip. The little girl — Portia, called Poe by all — gurgles happily and reaches her arms out for Finn. Rey hands her over and then clasps her hands behind her back, gazing down at the headstone that stands in a peaceful corner of their property, down the path from the cottage where she, Finn, and their daughter have made their home.

“One year already,” Finn says softly to his wife. “It feels like so much longer.”

Rey nods in agreement, her eyes still lowered. “Less than that, still, for Ben.”

Their cousin is buried at Huxley Hall. A note was not found in the immediate aftermath, but in clearing out his room, the servants discovered a letter, unsent, in which he begged to be laid to rest beside Hux, if the war ever saw fit to take him from Ben. It did, and so he was; and Leia’s influence and their family name have silenced any whispers in the town.

(Hux’s grave is empty — his body, like Poe’s, remains in France, where the fighting has only worsened in the months since their departures. But Rey likes to think that his soul and Ben’s have still found peace. They are together in death as they could not be in life.)

“I miss him,” Rey says, her eyes still fixed on Poe’s name.

Finn knows she speaks of both of them, the men this family has lost. “I know,” he says. He puts his arm around her waist, Portia balanced between them: his damaged nerves have healed almost fully, and his greatest joy is to be able to hold his family close.

The war has taken so much, but it cannot take their love from them.

“Come, my loves,” Rey says. “Let’s go back inside where it’s warm.” She kneels, briefly, and kisses her fingers, pressing them to the stone in a final benediction. She stands again and takes Finn’s arm, and in peaceful silence, the little family turn and walk back toward their home. The snow crunches beneath their feet. The sun shines in full force.

The war is not over; their dead will not return; but life, beyond all odds, will go on.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, lads, here we are! This behemoth could not have been written without a considerable amount of research, and a full bibliography can be found on my [Tumblr](http://huxes.tumblr.com/tagged/anthem-biblio), as promised. All inaccuracies (such as the slightly-fudged details of the Battle of Frezenberg in this chapter) are my own, and are often intentional sacrifices to plot, but I hope that nothing has been glaring enough to hinder anyone's enjoyment (or, for that matter, their suffering.)
> 
> On that cheery note: thank you to [first-disorder](http://first-disorder.tumblr.com) for [this exquisitely painful illustration](http://huxes.tumblr.com/post/170992664526), and _thank you_ to everyone who's joined me on this journey and seen it through to the (bittersweet?) end. This fic has been a long, hard labour of love, and I can't tell you how much it means to get even some of that love back from you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. ❤️


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